David Starkey
Old Maxwell Street market, Sunday morning
One wants to claim that “Epistrophy,”
Coltrane and Monk swinging
over Blakey’s drums, drifts
above the stalls and people shopping
for the shadowy essentials
of Chicago life, but that’s a lie,
of course. It’s rap instead,
or salsa or whatever
unfamiliar music Latvians cherish.
And no one’s buying fur
or ruffs and lace embroidery,
but hubcaps, rather, and pirated cassettes
and cheap dinnerware.
Still,
folly here is picayune.
Everyone knows its a pig-heap
we’ve all arisen early to swill in.
Everyone’s already wise
to the rackets. That Vietnamese kid
no more thinks he’s just bought
a new Rolex than he believes
in apple pie and the value of a buck.
The late fall sun’s still low.
Smell of hot dogs and cigar smoke,
mildew, diesel and an incongruous whiff
of fresh-baked bread. Once
this was all marshland, right?
So what’s the big surprise
if things sometimes stink?
The real shock would be to learn
that someone still had faith
in this cynical free enterprise,
someone who could turn
the trilling hawking songs
of crimson-veined and bitter peddlers
into the lucky music
of Monk’s false fingerings
and Coltrane’s tenor saxophone.
Page(s) 52-53
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