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Callaloo 27.2 (2004) 409-410



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from Autobiography of My Alter Ego


Do you know this tune,
                 do you know who's playing
tenor? Listen. Listen.
                You have to know
who this is, the only one
                who would cock his horn
& talk with the angels
                & demons of the deep,
trembling night. Listen.
                Here's another thing about war:
any man who can plea
                 through a hunk of brass
this way, could never kill
                 another man. You can't
talk to God & kill a man
                 in the same breath. No
way. He loved this tune:
                 Almost Like Being in Love.
Yes. Listen. That sound
                 is his, driven by his blood: it isn't
for anyone to steal,
                 or drip down to nothing
but a whimper in the dark.
                 I won't let them put rap
or hip-hop on this jukebox,
                 or any damn race records
either. It has to be truer
                 than gold. Listen. Listen.
Do you hear what I hear,
                 how he follows the sound
out of the horn, to the edge?
                 Where do you think
he's taken us, back to skeletons
                 chained on the seafloor,
or is he beside Lady Day
                 standing in buttery sunlight? [End Page 409]
You can almost turn
                 any corner, can almost
beg to be forgiven
                 for each carbine, shell, or grenade
your hands lingered on.

Yusef Komunyakaa is the author of twelve books of poems, including Talking Dirty to the Gods, Thieves of Paradise, Neon Vernacular: New & Selected Poems 1977-1989, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, Dien Cai Dau, and Pleasure Dome: New & Collected Poems, 1975-1999. A recipient of the of the 2001 Ruth Lilly Prize, Komunyakaa serves as a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets. He is a professor in the Council of Humanities and Creative Writing Program at Princeton University.


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