Jazz Poems

Dead forty years Bird brings his lips to the reed.

He rules the roost, and rues the rest,

Do wot-jadda bop.

Recovered from the shock

The war veteran Hitler found the doctor

Who cured his hysterical deafness,

And had the man killed , hoping that I

Might never exist to tell the story here,

A little distorted.

But Illinois Jacquet playing ‘Round Midnight

On the bassoon, better even

Than the death speech of Falstaff.

And listen, Moshe Leib Halpern, I

Have a miracle cabinet

Made in Japan–listen.

ROBERT PINSKY | 1940

from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young

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