SUITE FOR ANTHONY HEILBUT

SUITE FOR ANTHONY HEILBUT

1. FOR ANGELS STANDING AT THE FOUR CORNERS

“For me, that includes the many millions of ruined gay lives…”

      --Anthony Heilbut, Harper’s Magazine, February, 2017

I’m not spread across four States

hands in Colorado and New Mexico

with feet next door in Arizona and Utah.

No angel, either. Eyes strapped

to John on Patmos. I saw this,

reading the story in Harper’s.

I saw this. The number

that no man could number.

Revelations 7:9. Black gay corpses

outnumbering four thousand lynchings.

Let me try this in Spanish: Era

tan grande que nadie podía contarla.

Suffering in the pew comes down to this.

I saw this number.

II. ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THOMAS A. DORSEY

These songs, Downward Road, Creep Along Moses,

didn't come to me through car radio,

but the counsel in the North Dakota living room

before television. Not these songs exactly,

Tennessee Ernie Ford and Sons of the Pioneers.

My friend's Mom dies at 97, and I turn to Mavis Staples.

I'm trying to cross the Red Sea myself,

As is my habit, I'm walking the other way.

Still trying to have one more word with Pharaoh.

Precious Lord enters me before memory.

Tommy Dorsey was a trombone player.

I'm halfway through my life before I know.

When I hear who he was, what he lost,

who could I turn to but his song?

III. DOORWAY INTO THE DREAMING

Completing the unfinished

circle arriving at the sound

present from the start,

can it be remembered

how the story was read

that first time, catching on

by fragments in the middle,

dozing, then waking,

magazine still in hand,

asking, How did I get here?

Finding then the many rivers

and the long pull through January

cold with more snow
more shoveling,

and the always present,

and the always present,

hidden layer of ice,

snow, like waves,

drifting beyond the yard

entering the senses

and all the songs

for grandchildren,

all that traveling on skis

into the wilderness

to preserve their imaginations,

and the music-filled meantime drives,

into the mountain drives, new sounds

herring-bone steps into snow pleasure

snow cover, not snow cover-up

out of the suburbs of America.

IV. TOWARDS THE SURFACE

It coincided.

It did. It began

as coincidence,

social work,

and the burr

burrowing under the skin

all of it coming back

looking for all intents

and purposes

like anger

V. VERIFICATION

Re-reading, finding

the verse in Revelations,

after the fact. Fact-first,

in greater number

than the hangings,

the number that cannot

be counted, not connecting,

not yet, epiphany

like a tic in someone's breathing

as terror returns,

the revelation,

number that cannot

be counted, Biblical,

Revelations 7: 9,

that no man can count,

still not hearing it,

no man,

in the title,

not seeing it.

VI. AND THEN THE WORK, AND THE READING,

THE ALL AVAILABLE ACCESSIBLE MOUNTAIN,

GOSPEL ALWAYS PROCLAIMS GOOD NEWS

Where is God? I can't tell you

the El Salvadoran priest says,

but I can tell you this,

Not in the Empire. Holy smokes,

that this should surface

at a time like this, closing

The Gospel Sound:

Good News and Bad Times,

singing behind the beat.

First asking Karen,

How do you talk about back beat?

trying to understand how one sings

behind the beat. Are they the same?

Asking without a word of warning.

VII.  LETTER TO ANTHONY HEILBUT

INTERRUPTED CALL AND RESPONSE,

BEGINNINGS IN NOTEBOOK AND BOOK MARGINS

AFTER FIFTY YEARS OF LISTENING

Wheat still lodged itself in Jean pockets

from North Dakota when we found ourselves

in Seattle during the 50s. I was ten,

strange to every boy on the block,

selling brooms made by the blind.

Last night, reading in bed,

trying to get through The Gospel Life

after spending a back-and-forth afternoon

between your book and YouTube,

time collapsing. Gospel is

the music of grownups...bad times

will come in new ways. Thanks.

And thanks to Harper's.

To your covers all around.

At the paper shack down the street

from our house, smoking,

before starting our routes, an older brother of a friend,

played us the new song, What'd I say?

He was in Demolay. Some of these guys

might have made it to Harvard.

They were never spoken of where I came from.

Now 15, without a license, downtown Seattle,

alone in Birdland, I hear Ray Charles.

I see him.

He carries me through high school,

Modern Sounds in Country Music.

a working boy. The Elvis Christmas Album

with Precious Lord, I Believe, and.......

When I'd knew your story was calling the shots

I order the Dorsey songs, Gospel Sounds,

this time a man in his 70s,

and your big book on eros, literature and Thomas Mann.

20+some years ago at Garrett Seminary

reading the Hebrew Bible, I needed that Joseph story.

In Yakima we're part of the immigrant community,

but gospel flows through the Yakima River, too.

(Oleta Adams comes from the city school where I worked.

A sophomore girl came into class early each week

and sang My Eyes Are on the Sparrow for me,

because I was her teacher. If I learned late,

I knew early I was a blessed man.)

This morning, I too, spend a weekend with the Campbells--

thanks--and finish with your story on Aretha

from five years ago. By applying her ancestors'

sensibility to the American Songbook--

You're a churchwrecker yourself, Anhony Heilbut.

50 years ago this month, Army Sergeant in Panama,

I receive orders for Viet Nam. Med Evac.                        

In the summer of love, Karen and I spend a month

listening to Van Morrison, the Brown-Eyed Girl.

85th Evac Hospital, Qui Nhon, below Da Nang

on the South China Sea. We send all those kids home.

Tet started in January and lasted until

bombing stopped in July. All that music.

Enough about me. A few more things

about song and witness.

A few things about your Thomas Mann.

VIII. AFTER COMING HOME FROM THE BONSAI MEETING

DIPPING THE BUCKET INTO THE BIG BOOK

"Gypsies, Hungarians, prostitutes, homosexuals, vagrants, and exiles--in many cultures, these appellations are coterminous: any reader of Mann knows that these men are his brothers."

            Thomas Mann, Eros & Literature, Anthony Heilbut

Now that that's out of the way.

Sunny with a breeze, Wind picks up

driving me to another part of the yard.

Back from the mountain, mountain-held,

pruners in my hand,  holster

buckled on my belt. Add children

to that list up top. And old people.

C.S. Lewis reappears arguing with Eliot.

Midnight and moonlight made for other worlds.

Sehnuscht leaves the artist exhausted, disgraced.

He can never enjoy his passions.

Nothing cryptic about erectile tissue.

Never made it through Magic Mountain.

Music in the mail. Where is the music coming from?

Back from bonsai, Japanese black pine potted.

Fingers trace literature's roots in akadama .

Flattened by numbers that can't be counted.

Decades ago Jean Burden insisting,

the poet crosses the abyss without a net.

Here you name the surface.

Surface is abyss.

Only that which exhausts us.

I didn't make it through Magic Mountain

but I read every page of Eros and Literature.

Jim Bodeen

9 February, March, 7 April 2017