The Hard Blues
Listening to Julius Hemphill’s
Theatrical, soaring Roi Boye
Mourning his loss
Whilst reading about Emmett Till
Julius’s chilly sibilance
Bearing witness
Transported to Mississippi’s echo chamber
Three months before Emmett was killed
The Reverend George Lee, from Belonzi
(Delta town – spawning Pinetop Perkins
And Eddie “Guitar” Burns)
Shot dead
A traffic accident
The authorities said
“Lee the first Black
To register to vote
In the county” (1)
(Suggested soundtrack to these lines:
Max Roach’s ‘Mendacity’
Or J.B. Lenoir’s ‘Down in Mississippi’
“Open season” deplored
And, on other tracks from the same LP,
Imploring Presidents to act)
Back to The Hard Blues
Of Julius (Vintage 1995)
And other Hemphills down there
(Salient but unrelated)
In Como
The She-Wolf
Jessie Mae
Playing her Diddley Bow
Potent art and history
Drumming with grandfather Sidney
In fife and fiddle bands
Lonnie Pitchford riches galore
On other ancient instruments
And the piano’s sustain reverberates
Gospel
In an ice storm
Life threatening
Sustained by song
And I can remember listening to
Satoko Fujii and Natsuki Tamura’s
How Many?
And Albert Ayler
Live in Greenwich Village
In storms
Deluge
Electric
The Delta
Southern sediment
A poisoned southern well.
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