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Callaloo 24.3 (2001) 757-761



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from Vol. 13, No. 4 (Autumn 1990)

Modulations on a Theme: For Josephus Long

Michael S. Harper


Not far from Harvard Square
between New Years and Xmas
we file in to the sanctity
of your name: Josephus Long,
long on the details
of nuance and residue.
I met you in the winter
of 1964, in the snow
of Wiltwyck School for Boys,
in Esopus, New York;
you'd commute to New Paltz
at odd hours,
counseling your charges,
boys from 8-14,
who craved the structure
and elegance of your laugh,
but could not hear the perfidy.
At basketball you were silk,
sometimes brought down by brute
power, the elbows of equality
you would not stomach
as you swept for the goal;
your bright, black face
was like the best Brazilian
coffee, without cream,
and so creamy women
came to your doorstep
with all they had to give,
an estuary aflutter,
an estuary forsaken
on the remnants of the Hudson River. [End Page 757]
And so we came to Bard
and Vassar for the scent,
and the scent came;
though the girls came for crafts
to teach to children,
their wombs spoke differently
and so we had to talk of solace,
and how to resist the symbolism
of flesh, ours and their own:
we swam on those rivers,
were instructed by the suckholes
and rapids of a shallow river,
ran our tongues over placenames
still forbidden, and anchored
in the speech of Coltrane,
who talked exclusively in song.
Driving on the Taconic
in the blue-dark of spray,
and fearing oncoming traffic,
we headed for the "Half-Note,"
after work, to catch the last sessions.
You were awed by Elvin,
McCoy was young, aesthetic,
almost your age, and Jimmy,
Jimmy was learning to play
in the steam of subway cars--
and Coltrane came.
No need for sleep!
We checked, in team meetings,
the virtue of enrichment,
saintly period of custodial
control, when we could get the kids
to write letters;
and there were the tailors,
exclusive domain of local women,
who sat like cranes in the buzzard's
roost of the administration building,
but they were white,
unafraid of black/Hispanic
mafia kids,
more afraid of the Mennonites
who ran errands everywhere, [End Page 758]
and what they said
counted in more than needles and thread.
They lived for character,
and from where they sat,
they saw everything:
you would bring your charges
into the courtyard
in a straight line,
in clean clothes,
ready for the routine
of the 600 School Review--
600 schools were remedial schools--
and so when the herring ran
we would have runaways;
we had runaways on good days
and on bad;
we would report to the shrinks
and the social workers
what little we knew of design,
for in the files, the psychiatric
files we were not supposed to read,
we found the answers,
cost commentary on the underclass,
the vacuums and votive candles
of the future
for they were sacrificial lambs.
Still, we fought for them,
and when we drove to Grand Central
into the general population,
all their canteen money
as carfare home,
we wept for them,
but we wept secretly:
we had put them to bed,
soothed their nightmares,
retrieved them from the runaway
streams, fed them with pointless
forks, bathed their predatory
sores, patched them up with needle,
thread, and the buttons
of timeless assault,
our institutional homeland. [End Page 759]
We did not speak of bantustans,
for this was before the jargon
of oppression,
we spoke of a chance;
the girls from Bard and Vassar,
they brought their softness,
and the shrinks met monthly,
with reports on the reserves.
We live by analogy:
I told you to keep your hands off
of what you couldn't support
for a lifetime;
these are the seeds of love.
We drank Antiquary scotch
from an Irish stream
in Catskill, New York
where my father was born--
I pointed out the Day Line
where my grandfather worked,
how he lost his eye
to a pop bottle
that blew up in his...

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