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John Wylam | Let's SayOn a night as cold as this, you might expect an ironic cry
against the unfortunate walls facing west —
meanwhile, tonight, we'll hope that a single piece of music,
let's say for example this interplay
between John Scofield and Larry Goldings
from 1994, might recover Chicago for us again.
Guitar and Hammond organ tell
their back-handed joke; you could swear
the music's turning grave
As Gabriel Fauré's "Pavane," a piece sad enough
to drive lottery winners to suicide.
Chicago vanishes
in one of its famous fogs, and we're standing
before an open grave, the two of us
whispering something obscene; they taste wonderful,
those words, as the casket drops toward
the cellar of the world while you and I
try our damnedest to break each other up.
This isn't our funeral,
after all, and this music
reminds us again about resolution
in something like a major key, small hope
like Fauré's "Pavane," that last crescendo
too sweet for belief.
We both know
that cold draft between buildings on Grand Street,
any Monday morning in winter
when Chicago's either at work, or hustling a job;
the lure of the flower shop in the underground walkway,
violet lilies, still damp, closed
like the hands of commuters passing a college-age guitarist
sitting cross-legged on the cold tired floor,
his broken case still empty after the morning rush
has passed him. Now he's playing for the merchants
in their mausoleum stalls, that flower vendor
from Croatia, transit cops,
the week's first tourists. So let's say this:
before he gives in, he decides
to play one piece for himself, a Miles tune,
"Solar," maybe, to help him bear the cold.
Let's imagine he gets this joke
he's just told himself, his hands almost thaw,
enough to let him play a few quick figures,
one small defiance, unaccompanied.
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