Celtic FUSION

Wednesday, February 11th, Cafe 939, 8 PM

          Featuring Poems by Thomas O’Grady

THE TEST OF THE BOW

Remembering Michael Coleman

                                                                    

Before he faced the suitors in the hall,

He proved himself by plucking high-strung gut

Until it hummed a single note.  So pure

It sang-a ringing, feathered bolt of sound-

That even brazen bucks (their noisy brawl

An antidote for doubt) fell still; around

The walls skirts quivered for the first strong cut,

The larksome thrill of severed air.

                                                   So sure,

Then, one man stood above this throng, elbow

Arced, fingers poised to throw them into thrall.

What goddess nodded portent from the door?

He bowed toward his muse, that blood should flow:

Brash bodies moved, then shoved to fill the floor.

He proved himself the master of them all.

                                                                                                      

    

SERGE CHALOFF

                                             

Harnessed, yoked, reined in:

      for months, head hung low, 

body hitched to pain, anvil-

      dense, I pitied myself . . .

                                                                  

a horse tethered to a block

      of forge-wrought iron flung

from a wagon’s rickety bed.

      How we pull our own weight.

                                                                              

                         *

                                                                                           

Or how it pulls us: last week,

      that photo of a fireman

wrestling with a writhing 

      hydranted hose, a one-headed

                                                                                             

Hydra gushing spasmodic gasps

      toward the imminent collapse

of all that should not fall. . . .

      But does.  Body and soul.

                                                                                   

                         *

                                                                         

Body and Soul.  A blue surge

      of song.  Baritone sax.

A stooped shouldering of notes 

      from the smoldering reed-rough

                                                                                      

depths of a Herculean horn . . . 

      its swelling bell, its brass-

blinkered pads, its serpent’s

      neck coiled back upon itself.

                        

                         *

                                                                                   

 How we bear our burdens.  

      Steeped in dying, the tumor 

on his spine a leaden mass, he cut 

      his final vinyl wheelchair-bound.

                                                                                           

How he purged himself, blowing

      sinuous riff-rich lines . . .

Blue Serge.  Then “Dead at 33,”

      the morning papers read.