After Vallejo

African American Review, Spring-Summer, 2005 by A.B. Spellman

After Vallejo
(title after Michael Harper)

   i will die in havana in a hurricane
   it will be morning, i'll be facing southwest
   away from the gulf, away from the storm
   away from home, looking to the virid hills
   of matanzas where the orisha rise, lifted
   by congueros in masks of iron, bongoseros
   in masks of water, timbaleros in masks of fire
   by all the clave that binds the rhythms of this world

   i'll be writing when i go, revising another
   hopeful survey of my life. i will die of nothing
   that i did but of all that i did not do
   i promised myself a better self
   than i could make & i will not forgive

   you will be there, complaining
   that i never saved you, that i left you
   where you live, stranded
   in your own green dream

   when you come for me come singing
   no dirge, but scat my eulogy in bebop
   code. sing that i died among gods
   but lived with no god & did not suffer
   for it. find one true poem that i made
   & sing it to my shade as it fades
   into the wind. sing it presto, in 4/4 time
   in the universal ghetto key of b flat

   i will die in havana in rhythm. tumbao
   montuno, guaguanco, dense strata
   of rhythm pulsing me away
      & the mother of waters
   will say to the saint of crossroads
   well, damn. he danced his way out after all

A. B. Spellman has written a great deal about jazz. His classic book on jazz has recently been reissued as Four Jazz Lives (U of Michigan P). He was co-host of National Public Radio's Basic Jazz Library. Most recently, Mr. Spellman was Deputy Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.