The Silences of Bob Kaufman: A Cento and; Cento for Césaire
- The Silences of Bob Kaufman: A Cento* and; Cento for Césaire*
The Silences of Bob Kaufman: A Cento*
the truth is an empty bowl of ricetruth is a burning guitarit takes so much to be nothinglong green journeys into sounds of deathyou get off at Fifty-ninth Street forever
eternity has wet sidewalksall those well-meaning peoplewho gave me obscure bookswhen what I really neededwas a good mealordinary people, that is, people whose annihilationis handled on a corporate scalethey have memorized the pimpleson your soul
whether I am a poet or not, I usefifty dollars’ worth of airevery day, cooldear people, let us eat Jazzso we sat down on our bloodsoakedgarments and listened to Jazz
one thousand saxophones infiltrate the citymy face is covered with maps of dead nationsthe poet nailed to the bone of the worldI love him because his eyes leakin most cases, a sane hermit will beata good big manI think of Chaplin and roll a mental cigaretteyou must have been great alive
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Cento for Césaire*
Where Africa was a case of the unspoken, Europe was a case of that which is endlessly speaking—endlessly speaking us.
—Stuart Hall
strength lines me up on the shadowless meridiansweltering pile of chipped plateshard night long pole night without starsit is the hour for throwing a desiccated delta across my faceand why not go on excite me the first step of chaosharsh tom-toms that maintain on highmy dwelling of water of wind of iodine of starsdwelling made of an epidemic of drumsdwelling made of water glimpsed upon wakingdwelling made of animal skins and eyelidsthe raw bellowing the caiman emitsat the outset of an earthquakeas your solstice shakes me strikes me devours methere I am in my dwelling in your faceright where my mutilations are other limbs grow backwatching the world explode at the option of my silence
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Spree MacDonald lives in New Orleans and is the Chair of the Humanities Department at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. His poetry has been published in South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and was nominated for a 2014 Pushcart Prize.
Footnotes
* all lines adapted, respectively, from the following poems by Bob Kaufman: “A Tiger in Each Knee,” “[I Want to Ask a Terrifying Question],” “Fragment from Public Secret,” “Walk Sounds,” “[I Want to Ask a Terrifying Question],” “Blues for Hal Waters,” “Bonsai Poems,” “Countess Erica Blaise: Chorus,” “Hart … Crane,” “Afterwards, They Shall Dance.” “Dear People,” “War Memoir: Jazz, Don’t Listen to it at Your Own Risk,” “Battle Report,” “Would You Wear My Eyes?,” “The Poet,” “Ginsberg (for Allen),” “Song of the Broken Giraffe,” “Sullen Bakeries of Total Recall,” “Benediction.”
* all lines adapted from Aimé Césaire’s Solar Throat Slashed (Wesleyan: 2011).
