Ayin 4: Unspoke’s Requiem

it is 1967 in a club in Seattle, or New York, or where there is music it is now, right now, with the record playing it is   tomorrow    =    our only question       :: “Dearly Beloved” churchical McCoy    twin fisted bellwether fluted harbinger of a time   that is no time    time’s suspension not its end (a change to come         ((wait))     listening was now their only prayer, their faithful observance     Questions are for later     and for us:

what when, what we    spoke of blackness     spoke of speaking     spoke of speaking truth     spoke of false witness   the record spins   who asked “what do we speak of speech and speech’s unsaid?”

she is    at the window at the door   at the podium she adjusts her hair, her attitude    Elvin crashes a cymbal   air brakes hiss   somewhere     “Sun Ship” if it was a record Jimmy’s bass moves them, us    or the record changes       incongruous fado : diaphanous saudade          inescapable or unlimited

    only seems

what then    or what them   what yearning    or what movement asked again about blackness, about freedom asked again the infinite question of love   what was desired in desire     constitutively unthought   the sound filled their space   their time   the spaces between them   spaces gave them a them    : spoke of the them    they felt they could see him, that he belonged to their they:

  fragile strength of a gingerbread boy   asked of soul, of soullessness   (and fastness: 32^nd note runs, run, as fast as you can)     —and asked of -ness

      :: you may as well fly.

Questions are for later     and for us:   what did he see with his eyes pinched shut? in the question “what speaks of speaking,” what speaks? of what does it speak?     of what it?

Coltrane announces himself, a second solo terrible beautiful light blossoms, orgiastic and spilling like the cracked overtone trill from B to C from B to C from B to C to D   asked of beauty, found they were not ready

      the sound of peace       of silent prayer,     for love and         after love the healing force of the universe it loves so well    it breaks       the world apart       when it comes     the music says: sadness is the price for wisdom. Saudade again     longing without longing again     Saxophone merged tenor and vehicle.     dusk-dawn :: mastered tri-tone substitutions and whole-tone or melodic minor scales.     spring it might as well be         vibrattoless arc bringing a light from where there is no light     a light that asks of where’s there of where’s here On that stage   or on that record     we keep vigil time’s lament destined to be incomplete. to incomplete us   he said, “Trane didn’t need the saxophone,” and stood       as if to leave

        Amen.