He, being dead, yet speaks, pipes, writes


Listen:
lessons in bone.

Jazzman lifts brass, like knife,
riffing filigrees of sadness, sonic scrimshaw
upon hammers, anvils, stirrups, all
the smallest ossicles of this
benighted head.
Bowed head. Eyes burn.

Listen:
my love comes,
kittenlike,
bearing gifts. Four roses odorless
and still as newly killed mice;
lays them out, like my heart,
at her feet,
with the news of her leaving.

Alone now with the jazzman,
taking all the wine dark lines
of haunted face,
written by the blind luck draw
of double helix,
scribed by horn
(not ax, but knife)
now sharpened
on the castanet clatter
of my love’s knocking,
my love’s leaving. I raise

a toast:
a cup of gladness
turned to vinegar and gall.
Put four roses into it:

The color of memory.
The complexion of time.
The shade of solitude.
The hue and pattern of
the chiaroscuro coloratura
the jazzman scratches on my bones.

Listen: I will
raise a toast to the woman,
whose tuition, though bitter,
costly as a mouthful of ants,
is the unwilling dues
I pay to hear
all the way to my bones,
that hard bought beauty
of the blues.