Song of the Andoumboulou: 40

      Asked his name, he said,
    "Stra, short for Stranger."
      Sang it. Semisaid, semisung.
"Stronjer?" I asked, semisang,
    half in jest. "Stronger,"
            he
      whatsaid back. Knotted
    highness, loquat highness,
      rope turned inward, tugged.
    Told he'd someday ascend,
he ascended, weather known as
      Whatsaid Rung... Climb was
        all anyone was, he went
            on,
    want rode our limbs like
        soul, he insisted, Nut's
      unremitting lift...
          Pocketed
rock's millenarian pillow...
            Low
      throne we lay seated on,
    acceded to of late, song of
  setting out rescinded, to
      the bone was what measure
    there was. To the bone meant
birdlike, hollow. Emptiness
            kept us
      afloat. What we read said
    there'd been a shipwreck. We
        survived it, adrift at sea...
An awkward spin it all got,
            odd
      aggregate. Occupied. Some
    said possessed... Buoyed
        by lack, we floated boatlike,
    birdlike, bones emptied out
            inside.
      We whose bodies, we read, would be
        sounded, We lay on our backs'
low-toned insinuance tapped,
    siphoned into what of what aroused
        us arrested us,    tested us
            more
        than we could bear...
            Loquat
      highness's goat-headed look's
        unlikely lure... Lore made of
less-than, more than he'd admit,
            muse
    made of wished-it-so... Ubiquitous
        whiff had hold of our noses,
      nostrils flared wide as the
    sky. Gibbering yes, that must have
      been how it was, what there
            was
at all a bit of glimpsed inwardness,
    buffeted cloth, bones in black
            light
        underneath... To the bone meant
to the
      limit, at a loss even so,    eyes,
        ears, nostrils, mouths    holes in
our heads a stray breeze made flutes
            of,
      rungs what before had been water,
    bamboo atop Abakwa drum... An acerbic
        wine dried my tongue, my top lip
      quivered. "Perdido... ," I sang,
            offkey.
So to lament beforehand what would
    happen... Rope what would before have
            been
breath

*

      Whatsaid sip they lit Eleusis
with it seemed. Barley mold
    made them wince... Heartrending
    sky, held breath held high
            as a cloud,
          Hoof-to-the-Head knocked hard,
      no bolt from on high but their
        lips' convergence came close,
            Maria
    ruing the movement of ships...
        The sunken ship they at times
took it they were on    no sooner
            sank
        than sailed again. Failed or
      soon-to-fail form, sisyphean
            rock,
        rough, andoumboulouous roll.
            Serpent
      wave, serpent wing, hoisted rag
        snapped at by wind. Flag she
      saw he lay bound up in, insisting
        they'd meet again. Lag anthem
      suffused every corner, music
            more
the he she saw,    we the escaping
      they, calling out names no where
            we'd
        arrive would answer to, nowhere the
            louder
we'd shout

____________________

    Dark wintry room they lay shivering
in...
      Late would-be beach they lay
    under the sun on...
      Sarod strings dispatching the fog
    from Lone Coast, fallaway shore
      they lay washed up on...
            Their
      lank bodies' proffered sancta
            begun to
        be let go, Steal-Away Ridge
      loomed larger than life. Extended
        or extinguished it, no one
      could say which,    the soon-to-be
            saints
        arrayed in rows at cliff's edge, our
          motley band uncomfortably among
        them. A school of sorrow seeking
            sorrow's
      emollient, albeit seeking may've meant
        something more, older than seeking, re-
      mote coming-to, barely known, of a piece,
            beginning
    they broke taking
hold

Nathaniel Mackey is the author of Discrepant Engagement: Dissonance, Cross-Culturality, and Experimental Writing, Whatsaid Serif, School of Udhra, Bedouin Hornbook, Djbot Baghostus's Run, and, most recently, Atet A.D., which is volume three of From A Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate, and Four for Glenn, a chapbook of poems. He teaches at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

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