FARMHOUSES curl like horns of plenty, hide
paintless lean shanks against a barn or crouch
empty in the shadow of a mountain. Here
there is no house at all—
only the bones of a house,
lilacs growing between them,
honeysuckle over.
There is a door, a fireplace,
the skeleton of a pine,
a railroad thirty yards from the empty door. –
I heard a railroad section man playing on a jew’s-harp—
Were is now that merry pafty I remember long ago?
Nelly was a Lady… twice … Old Black Joe
as if he laid a hand against my shoulder
saying
—Your father lived here long ago,
your father’s father built the house, lies buried
under the pine—
Sing Nelly was a Lady Lady
Blue Funiata….. Ood Black Joe.
For sometimes a familiar music hammers
like blood against the eardrums, paints a mist
across the eyes, as if the smell of lilac
became a music visible in the air.
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