I pay tribute again/East Coast Tribute.
Recalling Browne
and his For a Dancer
I’m not sure
what it is
about these days
that reminds
me about those times
on the East Coast
and of that Christmas
in 73.
It wasn’t white
it just rained
the grey mist
collecting
and clinging
to the forests
on the hills
above Torrington
and so you agreed
to drive me to the house
of Harriet Elizabeth
Beecher Stowe.
And you asked
if I knew much
about her and so
I recounted her life
and you asked
how an Englishman
knew so much
about America
but you made
no reference
to the blacks
and slaves.
So I told you the title
of my thesis in 72
Racism and colonisation
and the way
I was brought up
in a non-conformist
Methodist tradition
and you sighed
and just said
keep talking
I love the sound
of the way you talk
and the way
you use words.
On another day
I paid tribute
to Dylan walking
across town
from second avenue
to Hudson and 11th
in some kind
of pilgrimage
to the White Horse Tavern
and sitting
on the shiny
red plastic
covered stool
at that long
dark wooden bar
I ordered a beer
and recited aloud
the words
“Over St John’s Hill
the hawk on fire hangs
still in a hoisted cloud,
at drop of dusk,
he pulls to his claws and gallows up the rays
of his eyes
the small birds
of the bay
and the shrill
child’s play.”
I much preferred
Finnegan’s Wake
on 1st and 73rd
the owner was
from Galway
and I’d meet
the postman
late at the end
of his shift
and we’d sit
and drink Schlitz
and talk about
songs and hymns,
and the day
he ran from
the Red Army Choir
in Bute Dock
in Wales
and he’d sing softly
Ar hyd yr nos.
Lorca lived
for a while
on 116th
near Harlem
a stretch
too far
in my white
friends eyes
back then
but I walked there
anyway
and imagined
how this man
of Duende
and the deep songs
of the flamenco
loved this place
the sound of
its music and rhythms
and the grace
of the way
people smiled
and what would
Lorca have said
if he’d heard
the tone
of “Do not go
gentle”
and maybe
he too
would have
recognised
the Duende
in the Welsh blues
and I recalled.
“By the East River
and the Bronx boys were singing,
exposing their waists with the wheel, with oil,
leather, and the hammer. Ninety thousand miners
taking silver from the rocks and children drawing
stairs and perspectives.”
It is the deep song
that greets me
that makes me rise
that made me the man I was,
the man that I am.
