i. m. Raphe
Malik
To begin
when I'm weary can't decide
an answer to a bewildering question
I ask his music for its opinion...
And the answer is always
immediate and clear.
I asked "Hightail" if I
should
take a job
And it answered with its
tigered orange blacks
high above rooftops
swept billowing in breezes
among golden leaves
And I knew I had my answer.
I asked "Invocation: Spiel
City" if I
should pick up and move to a new town
and it answered with:
an innersong of a thrush
Venus in ascendance
halftones of reality
specifics of the imaginary
the particolor of it all
And I knew I had my answer.
I asked "Chaser" how
I
might make it through allmy ages
And it answered with:
reflect on piled-up cumuli
the koi's snap for crumbs
each afternoon's surrounds
thread the maze ripe to seize
And I knew I had my answer.
I asked "Dominant
Predicate" what kind
of a father I might make
And it answered with:
learn and then and only then
teach the robin's egg sky
hold candles to firework's raised
riddle it out come to
terms
re-read every scale
And I knew I had my answer.
I asked "Civilization after
Coltrane"
about the future of the world
And it answered with:
Part the night of orbs in galaxies
those congeries of word and light
eavesdrop OTHER civilizations
a-prism every heartbeat there
and hang your Helios
beneath the monkey-puzzle tree
AND I KNEW I HAD MY ANSWER!
Always, his music plays
for me in unison in wisdom--
each song shakingits head
and smiling--
"Whatever leads to joy...
since afterall, so much of it is these
days,
in such short supply"
they always answer.
And whatever his music says I'll do.
Gerald Schwartz
