Saxophone
The cellar is his bleak repose,
in concert with the cockroaches and flies;
there he wipes his runny nose,
toils the day long, sunshine tries,
insinuates through rough and crumbled boards.
Lessons can't assuage his conflicts,
the bottom of the pile, his heritage affords
no more, the atmosphere restricts
his breath. It leans against the wall,
a tarnished, dusty saxophone,
a measure of the time when he stood tall,
cadenzas blown with free and strident tone.
Author Notes
...inspired by 'Black Tambourine' by Hart Crane.
*********
Black Tambourine
The interest of a black man in a cellar
mark tardy judgment on the world's closed door.
Gnats toss in the shadow of a bottle,
and a roach spans a crevice in the floor.
Aesop, driven to pondering, found
heaven with the tortoise and the hare;
fox brush and sow ear top his grave
and mingling incantations on the air.
The black man, forlorn in the cellar,
wanders in some mid-kingdom, dark, that lies,
between his tambourine, stuck on the wall,
and, in Africa, a carcass quick with flies.
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