Pelican Tracks

Pilgrimage

 Pilgrimage the music of decay was the music of redemption —Osip Mandelstam Bootheels on the bottom rung, butt Stuck on the barstool, and three beers Past toting up these longneck empties— Subtraction being my only numerate gift— I’m talking to Fred of Fred’s Lounge, In Mamou, Louisiana, the two of us Alone in the air-conditioned dark of afternoon: That last sick fish in the bibs and gimme cap, Red Man softening his jaw, has floundered Back to the evils of the workday sun, His coin still spinning, calling up The frenzied French of some jukebox two-step I couldn’t hope to construe, even if both eyes Were drained and level and locked in on The same jars of pig’s feet and pickled egg. I’ve angled down six states to hear Fred unravel these yarns, legends of market Saturdays When Revon Reed, microphone in the back booth Rising from a mausoleum of dead Dixies, would open up The Cajun caterwaul on KUEN, bare morning And already the dance floor woozy with A wash of alcohol, the waltz and the pigeonwing. From the coulees and the cattle ranch, or the green Spikes of rice in the floodfields, from the prairies Of cotton and the flats of sugar cane, they come In their weekend dresses and pressed pants— Even that breadman stalled on his rounds, handing out Warm samples of Evangeline Maid; and those teachers Hired here from the motherland, their mission to  Purify the wayward tongue of Acadia; and the teenage atheist Who dogs the daughters of the town cop and the chiropractor. Fred sweats another brew across the grain, down payment On the ticket I’ve reserved to Oblivion, Window seat in the smoking car, ears still eager As he whines away with his bayou haiku, his gumbo strut, All the spice and license of the lowlands. I’ve made this pilgrimage to leave my prints On the pink beerocracy of cinderblock, to beard the ghosts Of Arceneau and Fontenot and Thibodeaux, Fiddles sizzling in a fat squall of accordion, ’Tit fer and guitars tingling through the tunes Like skeeter drills in a trapline swamp, and on the roof That tall antenna siphoning off to heaven A case of this lubricated music, where the angels Kick back on a cloud, their halos raked low, Their lyres too lazy to keep up with The syncopated spoons and the nubbly washboards, As the band bears down on Colinda or covers That mournful classic, Hold My False Teeth, making Every molar this side of the Mississippi ache with gold. There’s no brassy hair at this quadrille; In this stretch of the woods, no nymphettes in tube or tanktop Abrade the air with their bounceables; here, No one guzzles from grief or self-defense. I’ve done The Opelousas jitterbug at Slim’s Y Kiki; I’ve been To Boo-Boo’s for the crawfish race, and killed A Ville Platte moonjar at Snook’s; but this room, Sleepy as the single stoplight on Main Street, Wakes in me an echo of its quickstep days, Till I can almost hear that singer’s catchweed call And the froggy gargle of his r’s, and someone shouting Don’t drop the tater as the tune swings in. You can still, in loose translation, pass a good time At Fred’s Lounge, in Mamou, Louisiana,  If Fred unwinds his tangled tales And hoists another bottle to the bar, this one On the house, his house, too many miles below The one I’ve travelled from, a frozen outpost In a foreign tribe, no chinaberry bush Or bloody petals of Confederate rose, no spirits Lifted to the shrine of pixilated grit. ...