Read Jimmy's Blues and Other Poems for Free Online Page A

be.
    The vegetation was proper
    for the place, and the time of year.
    The flowers were dying,
    but that, I knew,
    was virtual, at this altitude.
    It was cold,
    but I was walking upward, toward the sun,
    and it was silent, but—
    silence and I have always been friends.
    Yet—
    my journey’s end seemed
    farther
    than I had thought it would be.
    I feel as though I have been badly bruised.
    I hope that there is no internal damage.
    I seem to be awakening
    from a long, long fall.
    My radio will never work again.
    My compass has betrayed me.
    My watch has stopped.
    Perhaps
    I will never find my way to the palace.
    Certainly,
    I do not know which way to turn.
    My progress has been
    discouraging.
    Perhaps
    I should locate the turning
    and then start back
    and study the road I’ve travelled.
    Oh, I was in a hurry,
    but it was not, after all,
    if I remember,
    an ugly road at all.
    Sometimes, I saw
    wonders greater than any palace,
    yes,
    and, sometimes, joy leaped out,
    mightier than the lightning of my robe,
    and kissed my nakedness.
    Songs
    came out of rocks and stones and chains,
    wonder baptized me,
    old trees sometimes opened, and let me in,
    and led me along their roots,
    down, to the bottom of the rain.
    The green stone,
    the scarlet altar-cloth,
    the brown ball, the brown boy’s face,
    the voice, in Norman’s Gardens,
    trying to say: I love you.
    Yes.
    My progress has been discouraging.
    But I think I will leave the palace where it is.
    It has taken up quite enough of my time.
    The compass, the watch, and the radio:
    I think I will leave them here.
    I think I know the road, by now,
    and, if not, well, I’ll certainly think of something.
    Perhaps the stars will help,
    or the water,
    a stone may have something to tell me,
    and I owe a favor to a couple of old trees
    And what was that song I learned from the river
    on one of those dark days?
    If I can remember the first few notes
    Yes
    I think it went something like
    Yes
    It may have been the day I met the howling man,
    who looked at me so strangely.
    He wore no coat.
    He said perhaps he’d left it at Norman’s Gardens,
    up-town, someplace.
    Perhaps, this time, should we meet again, I’ll
    stop and rap a little.
    A howling man may have discovered something I should know,
    something, perhaps, concerning my discouraging progress.
    This time, however,
    hopefully,
    should the voice hold me to tarry,
    I’ll be given what to carry.

Amen
    No, I don’t feel death coming.
    I feel death going:
    having thrown up his hands,
    for the moment.
    I feel like I know him
    better than I did.
    Those arms held me,
    for a while,
    and, when we meet again,
    there will be that secret knowledge
    between us.

OTHER
POEMS

Gypsy
    He was standing at the bath-room mirror,
    shaving,
    had just stepped out of the shower,
    naked,
    balls retracted, prick limped out of the
    small,
    morning hard-on,
    thinking of nothing but foam and steam,
    when the bell
    rang.
    Not knowing why,
    for no reason,
    he touched his balls
    and heard his wife,
    Elizabeth,
    call,
coming!
    Then, he heard the children,
    Joe, five,
    Pam, three
    (They had, more or less,
    been planned),
    giggling and conspiring
    at the breakfast table.
    (They seemed to be happy:
    with more to say to each other
    than they ever said to him.)
    And, then, as he tied the towel
    at his waist,
    he seemed to hear a kind of
    groaning
    in his house
    A kind of moaning, even,
    and he looked at himself
    in the mirror,
    and, for no reason,
    he was, suddenly:
    afraid.
    He looked at himself,
    seeing the face he had
    always
    and never seen:
    not a bad face,
    pink, now, from the steam,
    laboring through the fog of the mirror,
    to be scrutinized.
    Assessed,
    one more time.
    No, not a bad face at all
    cheek-bones high,
    a cleft in the chin,
    wide mouth, lips that loved
    to open,
    to suck, to close,
    to laugh,
    big straight teeth,
    broad, wide-nostriled nose,
    high fore-head,
    curly black hair,
    the face of a Gypsy Jew
    And he was,