Читать книгу Pleasure Dome - Yusef Komunyakaa - Страница 13

Copacetic

False Leads

Hey! Mister Bloodhound Boss,

I hear you’re looking for Slick Sam

the Freight Train Hopper.

They tell me he’s a crack shot.

He can shoot a cigarette out of a man’s mouth

thirty paces of an owl’s call.

This morning I glimpsed red

against that treeline.

Aïe, aïe, mo gagnin toi.

Wise not to let night catch you out there.

You can get so close to a man

you can taste his breath.

They say Slick Sam’s a mind reader:

he knows what you gonna do

before you think it.

He can lead you into quicksand

under a veil of swamp gas.

Now you know me, Uncle T,

I wouldn’t tell you no lie.

Slick Sam knows these piney woods

& he’s at home here in cottonmouth country.

Mister, your life could be worth

less than a hole in a plug nickel.

I bet old Slick Sam knows

about bloodhounds & black pepper,

how to put a bobcat into a crocus sack.

Soliloquy: Man Talking to a Mirror

Working night shift

panhandling Larimer Square

ain’t been easy.

A pair of black brogans

can make a man

limp badly.

Lawd, this flophouse

has a hangover—

you just can’t

love hard knowledge

this way, Buddy Boy.

Big shouldered,

you’re still a born pushover,

a tree climber

in the devil’s skull.

You hide behind panes

of unwashed light,

grazing with stubborn goats.

Mister Big Shot,

once you dredged down

years towards China

but didn’t find

a pot of gold—

chopped down a forest of doors

& told deadly machines

where to go.

Now you’re counting taverns,

dumbfounded

by a hunk of oily keys

to foul weather.

Tangled in the bell ropes

of each new day,

scribbling on the bottom line

of someone else’s dream,

loitering

in public courtyards

telling statues where to fall.

The Way the Cards Fall

Why did you stay away

so long? I’ve buried another

husband, since I last saw you

holding to the horizon.

I hear where you now live

it snows year-round.

The pear & apple trees

have even missed you—

dead branches scattered

about like war. Come closer,

my eyes have grown night-dim.

Across the field white boxes

of honeybees silent as dirt,

silent as your missent

postcards. Evening

sunlight’s faded my hair,

the old stable’s slouched

to the ground. I dug a hole

for that calico, Cyclops,

two years ago. Now

milkweed & blackberries

are keepers of the cornfield.

That’s how the cards fall;

& Anna, that beautiful girl

you once loved enough

to die over & over again for,

now lives in New Orleans

on both sides of Bourbon Street.

Reflections

In the day’s mirror

you see a tall black man.

Fingers of gold cattail

tremble, then you witness

the rope dangling from

a limb of white oak.

It’s come to this.

You yell his direction,

the wind taking

your voice away.

You holler his mama’s name

& he glances up at the red sky.

You can almost

touch what he’s thinking,

reaching for his hand

across the river.

The noose pendulous

over his head,

you can feel him

grow inside you,

straining to hoist himself,

climbing a ladder

of air, your feet

in his shoes.

Annabelle

My head hangs.

It’s all to do with

a woman back in Alabama.

All to do with Annabelle

hugging every road sign

between here & Austin, Texas.

All to do with rope & blood.

He’s all to do with America.

All to do with all the No-Dick

Joneses. Mornings shattered.

Crickets mourn—

sign out of genetic code.

All to do with shadows

kneeling in the woods.

All to do with inherited iron maidens.

Beg for death in the womb.

Beg for it inside skulls—flower,

dust, lilac perfume, cold fire.

Gonna get lowdown tonight.

Faith Healer

Come singing in your chains,

Sweet Daughter. Dance, yes.

All the light-fingered artisans

of sacrilege, of wishful thinking

who failed, all the goat-footed heretics

crying for a High John the Conqueror

root, now here you are,

dear child, naked facing God.

A laying on of hands. Yes,

walk out of the grave whole.

Blood on the thorns. Vox

& ossa. You’re here, girl,

to obey His design in the flesh.

I plant a kiss where it hurts.

Trees walk forth. Throw away

your sticks & lean on Jesus.

Touch my hand, touch my hand!

More Girl Than Boy

You’ll always be my friend.

Is that clear, Robert Lee?

We go beyond the weighing

of each other’s words,

hand on a shoulder,

go beyond the color of hair.

Playing Down the Man on the Field

we embraced each other before

I discovered girls.

You taught me a heavy love

for jazz, how words can hurt

more than a quick jab.

Something there’s no word for

saved us from the streets.

Night’s pale horse

rode you past common sense,

but you made it home from Chicago.

So many dreams dead.

All the man-sweet gigs

meant absolutely nothing.

Welcome back to earth, Robert.

You always could make that piano

talk like somebody’s mama.

April Fools’ Day

They had me laid out in a white

satin casket. What the hell

went wrong, I wanted to ask.

Whose midnight-blue sedan

mowed me down, what unnameable fever

bloomed amber & colchicum

in my brain, which doctor’s scalpel

slipped? Did it happen

on a rainy Saturday, blue

Monday, Vallejo’s Thursday?

I think I was on a balcony

overlooking the whole thing.

My soul sat in a black chair

near the door, sullen

& no-mouthed. I was fifteen

in a star-riddled box,

in heaven up to my eyelids.

My skin shone like damp light,

my face was the gray of something

gone. They were all there.

My mother behind an opaque veil,

so young. My brothers huddled like stones,

my sister rocked her Shirley Temple

doll to sleep. Three fat ushers fanned

my grandmamas, used smelling salts.

All my best friends—Cowlick,

Sneaky Pete, Happy Jack, Pie Joe,

& Comedown Jones.

I could smell lavender,

a tinge of dust. Their mouths,

palms of their hands

stained with mulberries.

Daddy posed in his navy-blue suit

as doubting Thomas: some twisted

soft need in his eyes, wondering if

I was just another loss

he divided his days into.

Untitled Blues

after a photography by Yevgeni Yevtushenko

I catch myself trying

to look into the eyes

of the photo, at a black boy

behind a laughing white mask

he’s painted on. I

could’ve been that boy

years ago.

Sure, I could say

everything’s copacetic,

listen to a Buddy Bolden cornet

cry from one of those coffin-

shaped houses called

shotgun. We could

meet in Storyville,

famous for quadroons,

with drunks discussing God

around a honky-tonk piano.

We could pretend we can’t

see the kitchen help

under a cloud of steam.

Other lurid snow jobs:

night & day, the city

clothed in her see-through

French lace, as pigeons

coo like a beggar chorus

among makeshift studios

on wheels—Vieux Carré

belles having portraits painted

twenty years younger.

We could hand jive

down on Bourbon & Conti

where tap dancers hold

to their last steps,

mammy dolls frozen

in glass cages. The boy

locked inside your camera,

perhaps he’s lucky—

he knows how to steal

laughs in a place

where your skin

is your passport.

Jumping Bad Blues

I’ve played cool,

hung out with the hardest

bargains, but never copped a plea.

I’ve shot dice heads-up

with Poppa Stoppa

& helped him nail

his phenomenal luck

to the felt floor with snake eyes.

I’ve fondled my life in back rooms,

called Jim Crow out of his mansion

in Waycross, Georgia, & taught

him a lesson he’ll never forget.

Initials on Aspens

The scar tissue says

t. c. from dallas

loves gertrude logan,

etc. Flesh & metaphor.

Sizzling iron, initials,

whole families branded

as private property.

I am taken back

to where torture chambers

crank up at midnight

like gothic gristmills

in the big house

& black tarantulas

of blood cling to faces

where industrial

revolution repeatedly

groans in the brain.

Family Tree

I know better

than a whip

across my back,

eyes swearing

all the pain. Her father

cut down so young

in this stone garden.

She knows how easy death

takes root in a love song.

That long chain

in the red dust.

Geechee

bloodholler—

my mother

married at 15,

with my ear pressed

against the drum.

When my father speaks

of childhood, sunlight

strikes a plowshare.

Across the cotton field

Muddy Waters’ bone-song

rings true when my father speaks

of Depression winters

& a wheel within a wheel.

My great-grandmama’s name

always turns up

like a twenty-dollar

gold piece.

Born a slave,

how old her hands were.

When my father speaks

of hanging trees

I know

all the old prophets

tied down in the electric chair.

My grandmamas—

Sunday night

Genesis to Revelations

testimonial hard line

neo-auction block

women. Kerosene

lamps & cherry-red

potbellied wood stoves

& chopping cotton

sunup to sundown

mule-plowing black-metal

blues women grow closer

each year like bent oaks

to the ground. Both still

look you in the eyes

& say, “You gotta eat

a pound of dirt

’fore you can go

to heaven.”

Uncle Jesse

would show up

after a rainstorm

some tin-roof night

after two years

working turpentine camps,

pine scent in his clothes—

shove a wad of greenbacks

into Grandmama’s apron pocket.

A Prince Albert

cigarette between two fingers,

Old Crow on his breath,

that .38 Smith & Wesson

under his overalls jumper,

& the click-click of dice

& bright shuffle of cards.

Just a few things he learned at 17

in World War I.

Family tree,

taproot,

genealogy of blues.

We’ve seen shadows

like workhorses

limp across ghost fields

& heard the rifle crack.

Blackbirds

blood flowered

in the southern sun.

Brass tambourines,

octave of pain

clear as blood on a silent mirror.

Someone close to us

dragged away in dawnlight

here in these iron years.

Instructions for Building Straw Huts

First you must have

unbelievable faith in water,

in women dancing like hands playing harps

for straw to grow stalks of fire.

You must understand the year

that begins with your hands tied

behind your back,

worship of dark totems

weighed down with night birds that shift their weight

& leave holes in the sky. You must know

what’s behind the shadow of a treadmill—

its window the moon’s reflection

& silent season reaching

into red sunlight hills.

You must know the hard science

of building walls that sway with summer storms.

Locking arms to a frame of air, frame of oak

rooted to ancient ground

where the door’s constructed last,

just wide enough for two lovers

to enter on hands & knees.

You must dance

the weaverbird’s song

for mending water & light