I am untroubled by serpents
or the marinated feet of pigs.
I bear no antipathy toward bears
or the bees they bedevil,
& the devil never tempts me
to any evil I can’t invent on my own
(forgive me if I don’t delve into the details).
What makes me break down is a banjo,
lonesome as our only god the clock
but with two hands, both of them fast.
Looking in its open back
can be disconcerting: What makes it go?
There’s nothing but a bare rod
& the smell of rain.
Where’s the balance wheel?
The escapement?
The gear train?
It calls to me, the ghost in its machine.
Play it, son!
Make it ring like a hammer on steel
& rattle like a Gatling gun
until it smokes.
OTHER POSTS IN THE SERIES
- Catskin Banjo (videopoem)
- Medicine Show (videopoem)
- Shackleton’s Banjo (videopoem)
- The Banjo Apocalypse (videopoem)
- The Silent Banjo (videopoem)
- How Jefferson Heard Banjar (videopoem)
- Banjo vs. Guitar and Out of Tune (videopoems)
- Luck (videopoem)
- Banjo Origins (3): Jesusland
- The Fifth String (videopoem)
- Banjo Proverbs (videopoem)
- The Banjo Apocalypse
- Medicine Show (1)
- How Jefferson Heard Banjar
- Catskin Banjo
- The Dueling Banjo
- Medicine Show (2)
- Open-Backed Banjo
- Banjo vs. Guitar
- Banjo Origins (1): The American Instrument
- Luck
- Medicine Show (3)
- Banjo Proverbs
- Banjo Origins (2): The Fifth String
- Medicine Show (4): A Spell to Ward Off Banjos
- The Silent Banjo
- Sugar Baby
- Banjo Origins (3): Jesusland
- Medicine Show (5): Shackleton’s Banjo
- Where Bluegrass Comes From
- Becoming Banjo
- The Fretless Banjo
- Out of Tune
- Ohio man accused of killing wife with banjos
I’ve been back to this a couple of times — I find it very moving and significant, although I also find it hard to say anything intelligible about it. I know nothing about instruments and have no idea what an “escapement” is (besides a word that cries out to have poems built around it :->)
There’s nothing but a bare rod
& the smell of rain.
— feels biblical in its brevity and certainty and vividness.
Thanks, Dale. Balance wheel, escapement, and gear train are all things found in a mechanical timepiece. The bare rod is of course the extention of the neck that ends in a tailpiece on the bottom of the head. I had to resist the strong temptation to refer to it as the spine, which would’ve mixed metaphors with the clock image.
The banjo poems need a much wider readership than even your well-subscribed blog can provide. Do you ever submit stuff for publication? How about a guest-edited qarrtsiluni on the theme ‘Lost In Music’?
Oh, Beth and I never submit our own stuff for publication in qarrtsiluni, but if you’re volunteering to edit an issue on music, I think we’d be very interested in that. I’ll email you.
(Thanks for liking these poems, and in answer to your question, no, I rarely send stuff out.)
Handsomely done! I love “What makes it go?” “the smell of rain” and “The gear train.”
Thanks. Finding “the smell of rain” took much longer than it should’ve but as soon as I had that image, I pushed the Publish button.
One peculiarity of this series so far is that in every case, the title has been the first thing I’ve written — the opposite of my usual procedure.