Nathaniel Mackey

Stray, with Susan Howe

 

Song of the Andoumboulou: 55

—orphic fragment—

    Carnival morning they

 were Greeks in Brazil,

   Africans in Greek

disguise. Said of herself

                                     she

       was born in a house in

    heaven. He said he was

     born in the house next

 door... They were in hell.

   In Brazil they were

                                  lovebait.

      To abide by hearing was

         what love was... To

       love was to hear without

    looking. Sound was the

                                          beloved’s

     mummy cloth... All to say,

 said the exegete, love in

    hell was a voice, to be spoken

  to from behind, not be able

     to turn and look... It

   wasn’t Greece where they

                                           were,

 nor was it Benin... Carnival

morning in made-up hell, bodies

    bathed in loquat light, would-be

 song’s all the more would-be

     title, “Sound and Cerement,”

                                                    voice

      wound in bandages

   raveling

                lapse

                  .

    Up all night, slept well

past noon. Awoke restless

  having dreamt she awoke on

     Lone Coast, wondering

   afterwards what it came

                                         to,

     glimpsed interstice,

                                    crevice,

       crack... Saw her

  dead mother and brother

pull up in a car, her brother

   at the wheel not having driven

     while alive, newly taught

                                             by

   death it appeared. A fancy car,

                                                   bigger

  than any her mother had had while

     alive, she too better off it

appeared... A wishful read, “it

    appeared” notwithstanding, the

  exegete impossibly benign. Dreamt

                                                         a dream

      of dream’s end, anxious, unannounced,

   Eronel’s nevermore namesake, Monk’s

         anagrammatic Lenore... That the

       dead return in luxury cars made

                                                          us

        weep, pathetic its tin elegance,

                                                        pitiable,

          sweet read misread,

       would-be

     sweet