Midnight
by David Greenberg
‘Round Midnight
Eine Kleine Mitternacht Musik
100 year storm
How does it come before it comes.
Because chords unresolved
decompose wind and rain.
Where the lancing clouds
are solitude and self-accompaniment
the known song marred to wait.
A strange falling halts. Between
thunderous delay lightening
reclines as night over the day.
How does it come before it comes.
The second time searing the gull
waiting the Iberville
where the water walked
rain that ended the island
lakes the circular blood
swirling end to breath
stabbed as end keys.
So when it comes
hammer on string
night fathom
drowning weight a fortune stream
as lungs, houses overturned
the glazed pavement warring stars
cars cribs presiding over night
glades cut by rail.
How does it come before it comes?
It is coming because it has already come.
There are backs in the water.
And it is telling you it did not have to come.
The blow precedes not because it is original but it takes
what was before and after, hammer
the storied causal wars
the horn gate
singing into the change
because it was joy before it was lost.
Raised graves a torrent
never to find rest in land, only in stone.
Sing it, the same.
Some are born.
Some are born
moored to night.
Some are born
startling its death hound.
Startling slaughter in the sands
grating the flood
motion fog rising a harangue.
To glass tide,
fast channel grazing worlds stealing the sun.
The grasp of worlds in worlds
it will not come it has already come.
Some are to night
given to hunger
some are given up to night
and the moon is reflected where water is blackest
oil the flanging day
to have drawn the shares of night
the blood inches along
washed into these chords for a moment.
The wire lets in wound slats
to be stroked without tone
winding like a bell through darkness
broken by electric humming after water.
Mass is its canopy
acres of water.
Clawing plaster in attics
to eat or escape
mattresses overturned rafts.
Alone in the waters, coming slowly out of them.
All threats formed for voice
experienced to wild night.
Wild smiles to be found alive.
Lashing doors together.
Without flight, silent wreck on the clouds.
Waiting to be attended still waiting.
Wet shirts hung over thighs, holding dogs high over
watching his mother die.
A shudder
Monk’s lineament strike
where this homily has taken from jazz its improvisational
(and not given) texture
chimes of depth
to slow down its passing but its stroke
is where strongest bells are storm chains.
How does it come before it comes. Transcriptionists use [crosstalk] when it is impossible to distinguish concurrent voices. But this notation may directly describe the crisis. Before the Iraq war Bush called on a reporter he knew would ask: “Mr. President, as the nation is at odds over war, how is your faith guiding you? And what should you tell America, as you instructed before 9/11? Should it be prayer?” He answered: “I appreciate that question a lot. My faith sustains me, because I pray daily. I pray for guidance and wisdom and strength. I pray for peace, April. I pray for peace.” Prayer here is a lie so profound it becomes an instrument of the flood. Once when I was in New Orleans, I saw deep in the distance the most magnificent storm, straight lightening and forked, thunder and human lights to the horizon. It seemed it would stay away, but then I realized I was facing west and it was moving toward me. How does it come before it comes. What is neither east nor west has formed a new terror that flowers copies of spores, and the act of mimesis is the new creature that crumbles when touched. Crumb is merely derivative, distressing and haunting Monk’s notes as if they needed to be elevated — when rising and falling was their original direction. The decade when two cities were struck — by our own hands and others — how did we act? The blood on the streets was not blood of protest. The Pontchartrain washed it away. How did it come before it comes. A prophet arises through dreams — a space from which forms may experiment with matter, beyond human choice. But the truest prophet hears God’s voice plainly and not in riddles. I will never know the New Orleans my father loved, because his love for the place was so different from my own. Music is the city of return, and no one may give it back.
After the flood
Wary mist a tune rises
within the response is buried.
Grief is never the same
one day or the next.
Ten years since the levees
the blasting unruly order, culture
still resisted above and below, endurance
and disappearance the chandeliers
broken as embers.
Broken celebratory
bodies, garden cities
the arms of St. Louis Cathedral
stretched to grace
iron colonnades
sheared brick to keep the street low
pink underwater gates
always above a balcony
stops and invites day,
knowing itself
purchased of night.
The ready-flooded plains on the flat hill of Pontchartrain
The canal stretching Falstaff the vertical sign
a palm-flat route
a cedar swamp the hounds of Metraire.
Those who opened the suns’ unruly gates
met with pipes and chains.
As tombs are raised
narrow and tall in St. Louis Cemetery
built as day on night.
Warily circled notes
green over railings
iron braids,
parting storm waters
there is relief from deliverance.
In the Lower 9th weeds have taken
where stars washed.
A platform instead of a house
boarded angels a feathery palm
swarming blades of summer
construction debris, wreckage.
A walk was here. A trailer
iron floors earth rained in patches.
And as grief changes it is not all for best.
As George Crumb
casts into the piano
redevelopment.
Knock once.
Nails on the strings, a swift stroke.
Wailing by weighted doors.
St. Thomas, Cooper, Peete, Desire
Demolition records an unbelievable filter
the Council sips water while a man is tasered.
But sing into the change
because it was joy before it was lost.
To sing the most heartless
empty song the cathedral
dominating the pearl
worlds before words.
So it is not forgiveness but love that we know,
let it all be if music lets the river
lie and not turn over.
Joy is to make the song known again.
Now is the split time to mourn
the city he will never see lost
the city recovered
washing the unburied.
Noah and his family first appear similar to the survivors that Gilgamesh seeks. Gilgamesh’s friend Enkidu saw his death in a dream and died. Because of him Gilgamesh becomes afraid of death and wanders through the wilderness without rest. He repeats his story to every one who will hear — to the man-scorpion and the keeper of the mountain. He is starved and looks like a beggar in animal skin. He meets the young woman Siduri, the maker of wine with veiled face (a nightmare is the face wine veils). He asks her not to let him see the face of death, and she points him toward the man they call Faraway, Utnapistim. Utnapistim tells him he had a boat built before the flood, deceiving its workmen with wine that flowed like water. When the flood came he rose above it until the gods regretted what they did — Ishtar weeps for what she caused. And after Gilgamesh dies uncomforted. His foreboding causes his end, as he wastes away in a kind of drowning. In both his and the Noah story there is trauma and there is a parting of waters and some reconciliation. The gods grant immortality to Utanapistim and his wife, who remain separated from humanity by a long sea. Noah too has seen destruction and becomes drunk on the wine of new soil, showing his children his nakedness. Wine is the pooled mirror of ruin. But though Noah’s children have seen what he has seen, all except one cover his body. They do not let the waters turn over him. Because these places I visited alone, I thought of Joseph and his deep desire to share them. After everything I would love to be in New Orleans with him, to see his pleasure in the city — the music of children on the streets. It is not forgiveness that faces the flood. The difference is that the unspeakable is not repeated but is met by survivors, together.
The author of Planned Solstice (Iowa), David Micah Greenberg’s poems have appeared in The New Republic, Ploughshares, Colorado Review, Seneca Review, At Length, and other publications. A former organizer with homeless men and women and the advocacy and policy director of a coalition of 90 neighborhood housing organizations in New York City, he now is director of research for a national community development organization. Published essays on poetry and the public sphere have appeared in Poets and Writers and provoked a forum in The Boston Review. He teaches in both the urban policy and creative writing programs at the New School.