You walk down the street
Tap your feet
Crazy crazy crazy beat.
Walk through the town
Quiet as breath
Drawn by the sound
All around,
Go by the church
Quiet as smoke
See that old birch
Jump and lurch,
Faster by the shops
Swinging bus stops
Leaps and hops
Get you to the other side.
Run to the place
You can feel the double bass
The trumpet that cried
Hits you up and down inside
Yes
Scream to get in
…..
Smoke, cigarette smoke,
Taught cord, blue string plucking my nerves,
It ascends like steel wire, then gutters out,
Shatters, before I pluck a last dull chord.
It stutters, the last trembling of a note
And drifts, the last vibration
Through the corridors of memory.
…..
Up comes that blue note,
That dirty, hurting true note,
Up amber, umber walls, and gushes to the tallest
Hazy crazy lantern, and falls like burning ash
Glowing and spent from twitching fingers.
The lanterns sway, and the chinking piano plays
Its cool curded chords. The tessilated boards
Are rationed by the stamp and the shimmer of legs.
The octagon of music clarifies like water
After coffee slowly, and straightens like steel.
Feel,
The divergent weaving, the concupiscent heaving
The manual rhythm of the two tins cans
The trombone batters and its sex note shatters
The manual rhythm of two tin cans.
…..
1961
Mary Argent copyright