“Begging pardon”, “Begging pardon”,
I think that’s what that girl sings, but it’s a murmur, far off,
Just over the rumor of voices here and the smell of wine.
She sings smoky and rich and strong – Because she’s alive,
But I weep to hear her human warmth,
– Because, even after all this time,
my rough & noble brother is still dead,
but, ‘though a far-off whisper in a smoky song, a dear friend still.
Begging pardon.
“Beg pardon,” he used to say,
Hair a knotty tumble of hay-colored tangle
Hands hugely flat on his knees, “Beg pardon,”
Straining half off one of the spindly kitchen chairs.
Leaning from the waist, head cocked, eyes atwinkle.
“Beg pardon” he always broke in as my words stumbled.
Ear primed to hear some word I’d hid or slung.
Begging pardon, he says. What speech is it?
What tongue? Who is it you are? He still asks.
Still. Powerful within this far-off wine-warmed whisper.
Wagging a head too-heavy for a man,
Reddened hands thickened to threshing flails,
to the oars of blind, just Charon’s bark –
A rough soul harried and unhurried and unmoved
by the defiant thrusts and angry buzzing of angry bees.
My words remain far off hints and wine-warmed rumors of murmur to him,
dead as he still is.
A grizzly is a bear, a bumblebee,
a bee – Lean, murmur, whisper, cock, thrust, wave, strain, defy,
thresh or flail or prime or fire, harry and wag.
All that’s as all may be.
Rough, noble, still dead,
as this singing girl, alive.
Begging pardon, the soul persists
On a snow-whited ridge just above my head,
Red on white and beyond the whispering smoke and wine.
– Tracy Danison
“Grizzly”, tempera on canvas – Remerciements à Muriel Patarroni
Comments