By Major Jackson
1.
The future is a nameless, blind piano man
fingering some groove out
of dead art from the Roman Empire.
2.
This summer, I did my best to forget
the moon, pale-faced traveler
of the skies, but remained a prisoner
to his dusty metaphors.
3.
When I can’t sleep,
I count all my likes.
4.
This morning I read Zagajewski
who recently vanished into a quantum
of light. I think I treasure most his clarity
which like my belief in art seems endless.
5.
On the kitchen counter, right now:
three sunflowers in a clear vase stretching
the day into a single filament of wonder.
6.
No one knows why sometimes
when reading a book, the face contorts
into a golden wildfire at night.
7.
What I am talking about is my funeral
where all the pallbearers are Yoruba priests passing
my body once again through a field of summer.
8.
The fate of the living is to abandon their accents,
our first instruments, then to return
home years later to retrieve them.
9.
Tack this up on your wall.
I want you to feel this energy,
cellphones smoldering
over a city.
10.
A fox is a suffering creature
fossilized in the fingers
of a piano player, exploding
into a feverish rift,
drowning God’s silence.