I treasure any man who fashions his walk
after the woodcock’s sky dance,
and any woman who turns her neck
so that her body resembles a candle, so we’d glance
on all her secret fires and wonder
where do we come from, what fording place,
what delicacies of light the Dutch Masters
caught divining a window or bowl of figs and dates.
We cannot afford anymore Elmer’s bayoneting
children on the streets of Oakland or algal blooms
declaring war on the cormorant, or the bad debts
of the Tennessee warbler who has just resumed
on my shingled roof his mortal complaint
of our ingenious takeovers. Hey, are you
blazing like Vermeer’s paintbrush?
Urban Renewal (lxxviii.)
Major Jackson
Major Jackson is the author of A Beat Beyond: Selected Prose of Major Jackson edited by Amor Kohli. He is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University.