Song of the Andoumboulou: 136

  A comped piano lifted the leaves in

    Low Forest, a blanket of shade pulled

up, a sheet of glass put in place, free

                                                         pros-

    pect all around I thought. I wanted my

allegoric lapse, I wanted my whatsaid

  companions. Alone looking out under

                                                               house

      arrest, I wanted them back, less myself

   than before, unbeset...    An exquisite jewel

    it all was, no explanation, no equation,

                                                                  a

   time-lapse excursion it was. High John

    from High Point was on the box, the box

blown roofless, hacked wood scattered

                                                             what

   light there was...    A low trombone could

     be heard asking, “What have they done to

my beautiful boy?” A tree limb cracked in

                                                                  the

       distance, the all-of-us the horns had be-

  come. All of us there to notice, all of us there

    to see, “Blue Train” our wounded anthem,

hacked wood the woods we walked...    I was

                                                                    im-

     agining Sophia’s dreamt-about blue truck,

       dreamt arrival, Trane’s loud announcement

   a blur, train truck, wished-for congress come

                                                                         nigh.

    There was the sun’s late equation, the moon’s

ludic blush, truck equaling train equaling train

   equaling truck, soon’s blue transport, soon

                                                                      soon

come...    It was the muse’s blue lips the all-of-

     us the horns had become came thru, blue

  rebuked kiss, blue-blent reconnoiter. It was

                                                                       the

      muse’s gray canopy covered us, the we I’d

   otherwise be the trees fell free of, cries loud

     and low we’d have heard had we been there,

wood equaling would equaling we...    I lay

                                                                 like

   Anuncio busted up contemplating the book

     of it, last leg’s no-exit announcement no way

to run. I stood like Itamar, sat like Huff. A

                                                                   sweet

    smile captured my lips like Netsanet’s, Zeno

                                                                         and

  Zenette’s re-

pair

                      •

  Zeno and Zenette’s last anything. Zeno and

     Zenette’s last kiss. I saw them come back

from afar, saw them bisect every step. Friend

                                                                       and

    familiar, affine, foe, they walked in smelling

       of salt, the reek of  Lone Coast on their hair,

   their skin, sand a kind of coat they wore...    

                                                                      Some-

       thing I saw it seemed I dreamt I saw, some-

   thing seen exteriority reneged on, stand up wide

     awake though I did. Did I see what I saw I

                                                                         won-

      dered, the closer the coast was the less I felt

   located, water opening out onto everywhere,

    was what I saw what I saw I wanted to know...    

A versionary recital it seemed or so I thought,

                                                                        so

    abreast of it only the book of it remained, a

finger dipped in butterfly dust, a foot gone print-

   less, what of it I glimpsed gone out on tiptoe,

                                                                          wuh

      we’d have been whose escorts, wuh we, once

   there, drew thru the woods...    So it was or so

     it went, going so, soon gone, a blip no screen

accounted for, blink, as I did, all I could. The

                                                                        box

       had fallen away, sound itself an overt bed of

   scree, roughed underbody I fell and felt heir

     to, a chestnut sense were there any sense left, a

                                                                                new

  scrub sense of my-

self

             ________________

    “Let it play on you,” Huff had said, “let

it have its way.” I wasn’t clear what “it”

  was but my ears perked up. Mu, I knew,

                                                                  had

      gone into hiding and it might have been

  Mu. I wondered was it Mu he spoke about...

    In front of us the waves rolled in. They

                                                                  gave

  his eyes a glassy look... To see was to see

      oneself suspended, round Insofarian bliss

    at the foot of Mount Ida, Huff ’s ythmic

                                                                    what-

  say, a smiling spider’s

bite

             ________________

  A sort of cartoon the sun had a face and

    grew limbs in, round and round of re-

birth, death unacceptable, what I saw

                                                           was

    too much. I saw a tiptoe ghost prome-

nade, a sorcerer’s apprentice parade,

  Mr. and Mrs. P’s reminiscent lament...

                                                                Some-

      thing seen in a face no straddling of legs

  lived up to. An epiphany or an epistrophe,

    no way of knowing which. Press there’d

                                                                   be

  no end of any-

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