РефератыИностранный языкYuYusef Komunyakaa Online Poems Essay Research Paper

Yusef Komunyakaa Online Poems Essay Research Paper

Yusef Komunyakaa: Online Poems Essay, Research Paper


Elegy for Thelonious


Damn the snow.


Its senseless beauty


pours a hard light


through the hemlock.


Thelonious is dead. Winter


drifts in the hourglass;


notes pour from the brain cup.


damn the alley cat


wailing a muted dirge


off Lenox Ave.


Thelonious is dead.


Tonight’s a lazy rhapsody of shadows


swaying to blue vertigo


& metaphysical funk.


Black trees in the wind.


Crepuscule with Nellie


plays inside the bowed head.


"Dig the Man Ray of piano!"


O Satisfaction,


hot fingers blur on those white rib keys.


Coming on the Hudson.


Monk’s Dream.


The ghost of bebop


from 52nd Street,


footprints in the snow.


Damn February.


Let’s go to Minton’s


& play "modern malice"


till daybreak. Lord,


there’s Thelonious


wearing that old funky hat


pulled down over his eyes.


from Copacetic. Copyright ? 1984 by Yusef Komunyakaa


Online Source


A Break from the Bush


The South China Sea


drives in another herd.


The volleyball’s a punching bag:


Clem’s already lost a tooth


& Johnny’s left eye is swollen shut.


Frozen airlifted steaks burn


on a wire grill, & miles away


machine guns can be heard.


Pretending we’re somewhere else,


we play harder.


Lee Otis, the point man,


high on Buddha grass,


buries himself up to his neck


in sand. "Can you see me now?


In this spot they gonna build


a

Hilton. Invest in Paradise.


Bang, bozos! You’re dead."


Frenchie’s cassette player


unravels Hendrix’s "Purple Haze."


Snake, 17, from Daytona,


sits at the water’s edge,


the ash on his cigarette


pointing to the ground


like a crooked finger. CJ,


who in three days will trip


a fragmentation mine,


runs after the ball


into the whitecaps,


laughing


Copyright ? 1993 by Yudef Komunyakaa


Online Source


Facing It


My black face fades,


hiding inside the black granite.


I said I wouldn’t,


dammit: No tears.


I’m stone. I’m flesh.


My clouded reflection eyes me


like a bird of prey, the profile of night


slanted against morning. I turn


this way–the stone lets me go.


I turn that way–I’m inside


the Vietnam Veterans Memorial


again, depending on the light


to make a difference.


I go down the 58,022 names,


half-expecting to find


my own in letters like smoke.


I touch the name Andrew Johnson;


I see the booby trap’s white flash.


Names shimmer on a woman’s blouse


but when she walks away


the names stay on the wall.


Brushstrokes flash, a red bird’s


wings cutting across my stare.


The sky. A plane in the sky.


A white vet’s image floats


closer to me, then his pale eyes


look through mine. I’m a window.


He’s lost his right arm


inside the stone. In the black mirror


a woman’s trying to erase names:


No, she’s brushing a boy’s hair.


Copyright ? 1993 by Yusef Komunyakaa


Online


Source

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