A Wall (Scratch and Surveillance)
The day is
A fret complacency,
Finger to finger-
Board, working off
The usual charts.
A cold-slavering
Sky under pin-
Prick sun. Skimming
Through letters writ
By Virgil Thomson,
One sees he
Loved Thonon-les-
Bains and memory’s
Drover moves a
Morning up out
Of deep canister
Storage: how we
Hightail’d it out
Of the youth
Hostel and spent
The day spoiling
For a lift.
Took a ferry
Finally to Lausanne,
Revamping the itinerary,
And end’d up
Somewhere north, in
A wood’d village,
Shelter’d by strangers.
I think of
It now’s near
Where the fat
Industrialist Hans-Martin
Schleyer got it
A couple years
Later. Baader Meinhof
Gang. So goes
The recollect, robust
Enough to pull
A sweet curve-
Hugging rambunctiousness into
Itself. A German-
Engineer’d vehicle, it
Handles with enough
Spritz and dash
To encourage brash
Tilt and boogie
Up to a
Precipice, or down
To the end
Of a rope.
Thomson call’d Adorno
‘A very bright
Little man indeed’
And reject’d an
Article about Sibelius
Owing to ‘too
Much indignation,’ as
If dignity’d got
A leg up
Or a fin
Slipped to it.
Beyond me, musical
Nuance. I like
To think of
Junior Wells in
Conk and earnest
Biting off plaint
And vocable, precise
And tight-lipped.
Hoodoo man modesty
In a satin
Shirt with three-
Button cuffs, all
Release and retrieval,
Embouchure holding the
Moan against itself,
Chisel-sharp, rent.
