V - milnerplace

STRANGE FRUIT

Just now the music’s
in the rain and in
the washing of the trees,
but when the light
fell on the roofs
and idle chimney stacks
it sounded like a band
of Irish pipes supported
by the wail of trains.

I wouldn’t wish to die
in such a breaking of a day,
on such a note,
but in the music of the rain,
now that’s another thing,
with a score written
by those hands
that carved out flutes
and conjured fire. That
is the river that we run,
dance to be danced
deep in a forest
where the flowers thrust out
their genitals with greedy lips
and curl their phallic tongues,
or in the jig-sawn streets;
cadences of stone,
arias of roots
and steel.

Music’s a fine way
of seeing things, just as
a trumpet sounds like brass
and violins become the voices
of bent pines, and drums
are rumbling stomachs
of wild beasts, palpitations
of fear-stricken hooves,
blues are the harvest
of the cotton fields.

Strange fruit,
mood indigo,
rain-wash on leaves,
a dying day,
chorus
of equinoctial geese,
a full moon drifts
behind a hanging tree.