Song of the Andoumboulou: 136 Poem by Nathaniel Mackey

A comped piano lifted the leaves in
Low Forest, a blanket of shade pulled
up, a sheet of glass put in place, free
pros-
pect all around I thought. I wanted my
allegoric lapse, I wanted my whatsaid
companions. Alone looking out under
house
arrest, I wanted them back, less myself
than before, unbeset...    An exquisite jewel
it all was, no explanation, no equation,
a
time-lapse excursion it was. High John
from High Point was on the box, the box
blown roofless, hacked wood scattered
what
light there was...    A low trombone could
be heard asking, "What have they done to
my beautiful boy?" A tree limb cracked in
the
distance, the all-of-us the horns had be-
come. All of us there to notice, all of us there
to see, "Blue Train" our wounded anthem,
hacked wood the woods we walked...    I was
im-
agining Sophia's dreamt-about blue truck,
dreamt arrival, Trane's loud announcement
a blur, train truck, wished-for congress come
nigh.
There was the sun's late equation, the moon's
ludic blush, truck equaling train equaling train
equaling truck, soon's blue transport, soon
soon
come...    It was the muse's blue lips the all-of-
us the horns had become came thru, blue
rebuked kiss, blue-blent reconnoiter. It was
the
muse's gray canopy covered us, the we I'd
otherwise be the trees fell free of, cries loud
and low we'd have heard had we been there,
wood equaling would equaling we...    I lay
like
Anuncio busted up contemplating the book
of it, last leg's no-exit announcement no way
to run. I stood like Itamar, sat like Huff. A
sweet
smile captured my lips like Netsanet's, Zeno
and
Zenette's re-
pair

•

Zeno and Zenette's last anything. Zeno and
Zenette's last kiss. I saw them come back
from afar, saw them bisect every step. Friend
and
familiar, affine, foe, they walked in smelling
of salt, the reek of  Lone Coast on their hair,
their skin, sand a kind of coat they wore...    
Some-
thing I saw it seemed I dreamt I saw, some-
thing seen exteriority reneged on, stand up wide
awake though I did. Did I see what I saw I
won-
dered, the closer the coast was the less I felt
located, water opening out onto everywhere,
was what I saw what I saw I wanted to know...    
A versionary recital it seemed or so I thought,
so
abreast of it only the book of it remained, a
finger dipped in butterfly dust, a foot gone print-
less, what of it I glimpsed gone out on tiptoe,
wuh
we'd have been whose escorts, wuh we, once
there, drew thru the woods...    So it was or so
it went, going so, soon gone, a blip no screen
accounted for, blink, as I did, all I could. The
box
had fallen away, sound itself an overt bed of
scree, roughed underbody I fell and felt heir
to, a chestnut sense were there any sense left, a
new
scrub sense of my-
self


"Let it play on you," Huff had said, "let
it have its way." I wasn't clear what "it"
was but my ears perked up. Mu, I knew,
had
gone into hiding and it might have been
Mu. I wondered was it Mu he spoke about...
In front of us the waves rolled in. They
gave
his eyes a glassy look... To see was to see
oneself suspended, round Insofarian bliss
at the foot of Mount Ida, Huff 's ythmic
what-
say, a smiling spider's
bite


A sort of cartoon the sun had a face and
grew limbs in, round and round of re-
birth, death unacceptable, what I saw
was
too much. I saw a tiptoe ghost prome-
nade, a sorcerer's apprentice parade,
Mr. and Mrs. P's reminiscent lament...
Some-
thing seen in a face no straddling of legs
lived up to. An epiphany or an epistrophe,
no way of knowing which. Press there'd
be
no end of any-
more