Double Elegy

Whatever city or country road

you two are on

there are nettles,

and the dark invisible

elements cling to your skin

though you do not cry

and you do not scratch

your arms at forty-five degree angles

as the landing point of a swan

in the Ohio, the Detroit River;

at the Paradise Theatre

you named the cellist

with the fanatical fingers

of the plumber, the exorcist,

and though the gimmicky at wrist

and kneecaps could lift the seance

table, your voice was real

in the gait and laughter of Uncle

Henry, who could dance on either

leg, wooden or real, to the sound

of the troop train, megaphone,

catching the fine pitch of a singer

on the athletic fields of Virginia.

At the Radisson Hotel,

we once took a fine angel

of the law to the convention center,

and put her down as an egret

in the subzero platform of a friend—

this is Minneapolis, the movies

are all of strangers, holding themselves

in the delicacy of treading water,

while they wait for the trumpet

of the 20th Century Limited

over the bluff or cranny.

You two men like to confront.

the craters of history and spillage,

our natural infections of you

innoculating blankets and fur,

ethos of cadaver and sunflower.

I hold the dogwood blossom,

eat the pear, and watch the nettle

swim up in the pools

of the completed song

of Leadbelly and Little Crow

crooning the buffalo and horse

to the changes and the bridge

of a twelve-string guitar,

the melody of “Irene”;

this is really goodbye—

I can see the precious stones

of embolism and consumption

on the platinum wires of the mouth:

in the flowing rivers, in the public baths

of Ohio and Michigan.

Copyright Credit: Michael S. Harper, “Double Elegy” from Healing Songs for the Inner Ear. Copyright © 1971 by Michael Harper. Reprinted with the permission of University of Illinois Press, www.press.uillinois.edu/poetry/poetry.html.

Source: Healing Songs for the Inner Ear (University of Illinois Press, 1971)