Jazz Poems

HOMAGE TO LITERATURE When you imagine trumpet-faced musicians blowing again inimitable jazz no art can accuse nor canonadings hurt, or coming out of your dreams of dirigibles again see the unreasonable cripple throwing his crutch headlong as the headlights streak down the torn street, as the three hammerers go One, Two, Three on the stake, triphammer poundings and not a sign of new worlds to still the heart; then stare into the lake of sunset as it runs boiling, over the west past all control rolling and swamps the heartbeat and repeats sea beyond sea after unbearable suns; think poems fixed this landscape: Blake, Donne, Keats. MURIEL RUKEYSER

from Jazz Poems | Selected and edited by Kevin Young

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