An
Englishman is
crossing lovers' stars
While an
old black is crooning in
twelve bars.
One will go
insane, rambling of the
afterlife
While the other tells tales of all his
strife.
Both will
imagine resolutions,
And
fancy having real solid
existential solutions.
One will hear
Globes of applause--
The other, a
howling wind and a dog's scratching paws.
Both will lose their breath
For that perfect, momentary
finger-touch with God,
That moment of absolute life--almost death.
They will
walk in the dusty cold until the
stage sweat dries
Until that very last ring of
that chord dies.
They will pass an
apple orchard
With one giant dead
tree
And,
pausing to each other,
think
"That could be me."
They will come to a city that is
one leviathan crowd
And,
ears ringing, eyes sore from lit signs,
Think, "
Beautiful, but too loud,
And too many straight
lines."
They will come to a
dread sea,
The deepest waters of
sapphire doubt, so dark and so free--
In its
freedom so dangerous, in its danger so far--
They will
sail across on the
black's ancient guitar
And, to live, drink the ink from the Anglo's
black jar.
Crusted with brine and sick with black tongues,
They will
stand up on the beach
And breathe the water from their
lungs.
Then under the shade of
palms, having weathered all manner of
storm,
Gaining his breath, sitting with the Anglo,
The black will
elucidate a form:
"The
roar of the crowd and the storm of their
claps;
The
yelps of my dog, the rain's tinny roof-taps;
The cold breeze of
our nights and the heat of the stage--
How much that orchard, this world, softens my rage--
The glow of the
titanic city signs that tell
lies,
I see it again in the people's
burning or dying eyes:
Their loneliness
distilled and flowing in the waves of the oceans,
Their hearts and the waters swaying with
stellar motions.
In all this I see
One, that cannot be made rhyme,
Nor set down in
words or written in
lines;
It is far too
sublime.
Haha, not even by you, who sucks on sweet
limes."
The
Englishman laughed too, at the black's comment
so sly:
"My words, sir, are always a lie,
But, as with life, every word, each like a moment,
is worth the try."