foto©robcullen10022015
…
I pay tribute again/East Coast Tribute
…
Recalling Browne’s
“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
grey mist collecting clinging
to the forests
on the hills
above Torrington
and so you agreed
to drive me to the house
of Harriet Elizabeth
Beecher Stowe.
…
So 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 black people
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
you sighed
and just said
keep talking
I love the sound
of the way you talk
the way
you use words.
…
On another day
I paid tribute
to Dylan Thomas walking
across town
from second avenue
to Hudson and 11th
in some kind
of pilgrimage
to the White Horse Tavern
and sat still
on the shiny
red plastic
covered stool
at that long
dark wooden bar.
…
I ordered a beer
and recited aloud
his words
of rattling emptiness
in a place
where no hawk hunts
small birds
or sounds of child’s play
echoes shrilly
across a salt sea bay
words echoing
where a dead man
played his last
in a bar, in a city,
his presence
barely a glimmer of light
and feigned remembrance
all that now remains.
…
I much preferred
Finnegan’s Wake
on 1st and 73rd
the owner was
from Galway
it was where I’d meet
a Ukrainian postman
late at the end
of his shift
where we’d sit
drink Schlitz
talk about
songs and hymns,
or the days
he ran from
the Red Army Choir
the Russian cargo ship
in the Dock
in Cardiff, 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
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
the grace of the way
people smiled.
…
Lorca lived
for a while on 116th
near Harlem
a stretch
too far
in my white
friends eyes
but I walked there
anyway
imagining
how this man
of Duende
of the deep songs
of flamenco
loved this place
the sound of
its music and rhythms
the grace of the way
people smiled.
…
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 so 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
greets me
the deep song makes me rise
made me the man I was,
the man I am.
…
©robcullen1976.
Acknowledgement and thanks to Laura Garcia-Lorca and Garcia-Lorca Foundation for their kind response to this poem.
- “Ar Hyd Y Nos” (English: All Through the Night) is a Welsh song sung to a tune that was first recorded in Edward Jones‘ Musical and Poetical Relics of the Welsh Bards (1784).
