FIRST BOOKS ISSUE
Clifford Bernier
PAX HARMONICA
Wide as a river that gathers the shoreline
breaking through the thick morning mist.
Banks of the river that guide without borders:
the Yang-tze in Shanghai, the valley of the Rhine.
Draws in the forests, the backroads, the cornfields,
sharecropper shacks in the scratch of the Delta.
Rendered to sound by the whistle of rushes,
black as the soil by the tracks of the Southern,
colored by the Ozarks, the beechwood, the juke joints,
white-only signs on the fixtures of fountains.
Wide as a river that gathers the shoreline
breaking through the thick morning mist.
Wide as a river that runs beneath bridges
bordering a great inland sea.
Speaks through the comb of the breeze in the rushes,
draw of the tide in the cluster of marshes,
old-timey tunes in the whistle of reeds.
Crosses the riverbed north of the coastline
to the back-alley bars in the scratch of the Southside;
speaks of the paddle boats steaming from Natchez,
the chromatic flourish of a quartet in Brussels,
avant-garde bistros on the banks of the Seine.
Wide as a river that runs beneath bridges
bordering a great inland sea.
Wide as a river that raises the oceans
voicing the whistle of reeds.
Crosses the border from Shanghai to New Orleans;
travels the county line north of the bayou,
Vicksburg, Greenville, Clarksdale, Memphis,
the progressive bossa of Mauricio in Rio.
Slides in the streets in the scratch of Helena,
blows in the clubs in the clip of Chicago,
follows the Yang-tze from Chongqing to Cathay,
coal towns in Kentucky where the cool water rides.
Wide as a river that raises the oceans
voicing the whistle of reeds.
HYMNS
Now that leaves
empty trees
and scatter my lawn
like splinters
of sunset,
I am wrong to think
their branches
point to nothing,
as if the sky
were nothing,
as if nothing
didn’t matter,
as if only evergreens
have bearing,
bananas and coconuts
make sense;
I am wrong to think
the rebounding sea
or the bordering Potomac
signify more
than the sweet gum
graphed to a plot of stars,
or the red maple drawing
a range of light,
or the scrub pine
subscribing the moon.
I have been duped
by the conceiving sun:
clearings configure a
prolific canopy,
the setting sky is as
rich as ebony,
leaves soar like hymns
to the night.
RAINY NIGHT IN OLD TOWN
Saxophone on a rainy night in Old Town,
bassist laying it down behind the groove.
The sun don't shine.
Dreams feel like summer, slide as runoff on the pane.
Time fades like lamplight, dims to shadows on the street.
Strangers reach for shelter from the chill.
But the keyboard signs,
the drummer plays.
Saxophone on a rainy night in Old Town,
keyboard laying it down behind the groove.
These are the measures,
notes spilling like autumn leaves,
harmonies that make the sidewalk bend like starlight through the fog.
Harmonica draws the southern breeze in swirling beads of color by the curb,
ambers, russets, yellows, blues,
the curling tones of soil and sky that rise and tumble back and forth like waves.
But the bassist walks,
the drummer plays.
Saxophone on a rainy night in Old Town,
drummer laying it down behind the groove.
Snares trip like cobblestones.
Ideas pulse like streams, ripple through the veins.
Columbus Street, South Patrick Street, South Henry Street, South Paine.
The wig shops and curios on King,
like moonless tides and hurricanes.
Strokes like wipers in the cold that drive the waterfront to flood,
wash like headlights in the mist,
brush the elms in modes of red,
while the keyboard kicks
and the drummer plays.
Saxophone on a rainy night in Old Town,
reedman laying it down behind the groove.
Bartender slinging shots like satin sheets.
With eyes that serve the soul's desire for more than easy scores and one-night stands,
and passion plays that skip the mark,
hands that turn the knob for slipping friends.
A flute flutters in on lines like shoots of columbine in spring,
tapping remedies like wine,
dropping names like tears from cats.
In runs that raise the riverbed like melodies that move the way
the keyboard comps,
the drummer plays.
Saxophone on a rainy night in Old Town,
bassist laying it down behind the groove.
i
BLUES FOR TRANE
In the limit of form is love,
at the limit of form is love,
within the limit of form is love,
beyond the limit of form is love,
love caressing the summer field and the harmony of days,
love caressing the wound of loss and the sorrow of broken days,
love receiving the grace of love and the melody of days,
love embracing the devotion of love and surrender of restless days.
John Coltrane blew the blues
and in his blues he blew
Jimmy Heath and Benny Golson
at the Woodbine Club on Twelfth and Master.
John Coltrane blew the blues
and in his blues he blew
Bird and Diz at the Five Spot.
John Coltrane composed chords, couplets, honks, compassion,
arpeggios, gospels, third-connected clusters,
broken rhythms, polyrhythms, improvised ostinatos,
multiphonics in prophesies of hailstorms and sonic waterfalls,
seraphic squeals, screeching epiphanies, sheets of sound.
John Coltrane composed High Point, Spruce Street, segregation in Alabama,
lyrical textures, modal conversations, pentatonic penetrations,
Giant Steps, revelations, codas in every key,
Blue Train, Coltrane, Soultrane, Chasin’ the Trane.
Love, in the merciful wonder of knowledge.
Love, in the gracious resolution of God.
Love, Comes Love, No Greater Love, A Love Supreme.
ii.
In the voice of his horn,
Hamlet where he was born.
Hymns in the transcendent tone of an angel
probing the harmonic potential of time.
The resonant reduction of the blues.
On tour with Eddie Vinson,
in partnerships with Monk and Miles.
Phrases piercing the collective paradigm,
breaching the convention of consonant borders,
tempting the expressive appetite of energy.
In evolving languages of modulating motives,
in sacred vocabularies of mystic ciphers.
Pulsing daemonic convolution,
freedom is,
freedom is,
Freedom is love.
Freedom is harmony.
Freedom is love.
Freedom is beyond harmony, anti-jazz.
iii.
At the limit of form is love,
in the limit of form is love,
around the limit of form is love,
outside the limit of form is love,
Love caressing the summer field and the laughter of unbroken days,
love caressing the rip of loss and the sorrow of broken days,
love receiving the redemption of love and the melody of days,
love embracing the desire of love and surrender of endless days.
John Coltrane blew the blues
and in his blues he blew
Johnny Hodges and Dexter Gordon
Live at the Village Vanguard.
John Coltrane blew the blues
and in his blues he blew
Hawk and Pres.
John Coltrane divined cries, vamps, shrieks, lines at the tonal center,
autobiographical narrations, pentecostal punctuations,
incisive anguish, eruptive ecstasies, pianistic pilgrimages
to Dakar, Olé, Africa, India, Brasilia,
Ascension, Meditations, Interstellar Space.
John Coltrane divined choirs, squeaks, Huntington, sermons in every register,
incantatory constructs, sweeping structures, sliding sequences, universal signs,
tobacco sheds, Impressions, dance halls in Louisiana,
freedom in the discourse of tonic releases,
love, in the furious discovery of spirit,
love, in the relentless urgency of light,
Love, Just Love, No Greater Love, A Love Supreme.
Clifford Bernier is the author of The Silent Art (Gival Press, 2011) and two chapbooks, Earth Suite (Finishing Line Press, 2010), and Dark Berries (Pudding House, 2010). He is featured on the CDs Poetry in Black and White (2006), Jazzpoetry: Live at IOTA Club and Cafe (2004), and Jazzpoetry: Live at Bistro Europa (2004). Bernier is the former host of the Poesis Reading Series in Arlington, VA.
Gival Press is an independent publishing house founded in 1998 in Arlington, VA. They publish works with a philosophical or social message in English, French, and Spanish. Reprinted by permission.
Published in Volume 14:1, Winter 2013.