Читать книгу The Sick Bag Song - Nick Cave - Страница 12

I am vomiting up Milwaukee’s mussels and pretzel in an alley

Behind the State Theatre in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Minneapolis with its sensible weatherproof walkways,

And the State Theatre in the free Italian Renaissance style,

Its restored proscenium curving a hundred feet above the stage,

Bought by Live Nation in the year two thousand,

Then sold to Key Entertainment in two thousand and eight.

We arrive early but we get sick and we go on late.

The show of warmth from the crowd is staggering. Look! The audience are turning their bodies into concrete pylons! Their arms reach out like the lethal branches of half-felled trees! The music rumbles towards us along the tracks! We have waded through the blood of buffalo And Cheyenne warriors to be with you tonight. Look! The concrete pylons are turning into columns of light. I stand like a flayed dog on my hind legs and reveal An extending stripe of wet, pink skin. Leap! I say, Fumbling with my doggie bag of sick. Leap, you fuckers! And all the columns of light hold hands and, one by one, jump in.

•

That late night in the Grand Hotel in downtown Minneapolis

I approach John Berryman’s Dream Songs Like a master thief. I slow my heartbeat, And press my ear up the eighteen rails Of dark, vibrating verse. My innards rumble like a train. Slowly, patiently the tumblers click and with terror And comfort the entire world falls out. I yawn.

Then I dream on down to Washington Avenue Bridge,

Where the poet debated the subtle difference between

Flying and falling with the pretty lawny bank below.

You must take the first step alone –

A fraudster angel with paper wings tied to its back, like a sail

Said, You must take the first step alone! And, so too, the last! Then he kicked John Berryman over the rail.

And as the concertinaed poet suffocated on the grass,

I hit the fourth line of ‘Dream Song 54’ like a runaway train

‘I prop on the costly bed & think of my wife’ And awaken with a rush and a shrieking need, And dial, dial, dial, my wife! Don’t jump! My God! My pretty baby, don’t jump! Pick up the phone! As I remember, on the goodbye steps of our house, Her wet, unstable eye, that said, huh, huh, huh, Don’t leave. Don’t go. Stay home.

•

The Sick Bag Song is the leavings.

The Sick Bag Song is the scrapings.

The Sick Bag Song is the shavings.

The Sick Bag Song is the last vestiges.

The Sick Bag Song is the bile and the tripe.

The Sick Bag Song is the remnants and the residue.

The Sick Bag Song is the leftovers and the throwbacks.

The Sick Bag Song is the barrel’s dreggy bottom.

The Sick Bag Song is the rejectamenta, disgorged –

So that we can move forward and tomorrow leap differently.