Song of the Andoumboulou: 55 Poem by Nathaniel Mackey

—orphic fragment—

Carnival morning they
were Greeks in Brazil,
Africans in Greek
disguise. Said of herself
she
was born in a house in
heaven. He said he was
born in the house next
door... They were in hell.
In Brazil they were
lovebait.
To abide by hearing was
what love was... To
love was to hear without
looking. Sound was the
beloved's
mummy cloth... All to say,
said the exegete, love in
hell was a voice, to be spoken
to from behind, not be able
to turn and look... It
wasn't Greece where they
were,
nor was it Benin... Carnival
morning in made-up hell, bodies
bathed in loquat light, would-be
song's all the more would-be
title, "Sound and Cerement,"
voice
wound in bandages
raveling
lapse

.

Up all night, slept well
past noon. Awoke restless
having dreamt she awoke on
Lone Coast, wondering
afterwards what it came
to,
glimpsed interstice,
crevice,
crack... Saw her
dead mother and brother
pull up in a car, her brother
at the wheel not having driven
while alive, newly taught
by
death it appeared. A fancy car,
bigger
than any her mother had had while
alive, she too better off it
appeared... A wishful read, "it
appeared" notwithstanding, the
exegete impossibly benign. Dreamt
a dream
of dream's end, anxious, unannounced,
Eronel's nevermore namesake, Monk's
anagrammatic Lenore... That the
dead return in luxury cars made
us
weep, pathetic its tin elegance,
pitiable,
sweet read misread,
would-be
sweet