Last Guitar

to Jean Django Reinhardt (1910-1953)

                    Django, akana mukav tut le Devlesa*

My first, Amarilla—cost me a hundred bucks,
I went hungry at that price, but she and I would pass
whole weeks without speaking to a soul,
inventing songs for the sailing one—the little girl
in my belly who later on would refuse
to fall asleep without cello or violin on the turntable.

          ~

While she slept, a second child kicked under my ribs—
Amarilla and I played on. I remember the night
you, mi gitano, drifted in like a scrap of soot from the stem
of my midnight candle—I heard nameless notes,
constellations like clouds shifting under my fingers,
the strum in your throat drove me on
til sun lit the curtains.

Then one dark spring dreaming of freedom
it happened—Amarilla smashed
before my eyes, like a wineglass, on Calle Ventada—
slapped from my arms to the pavement
by a jealous husband—a tiny splinter of yellow
lacquered pine, all I kept of her.

2

My next, mi Goya, cost me six month’s rent—
I vowed to strap him on my back the day I left for
the coast con mis niños—Goya!
crafted of rosewood     spruce and ebony
strings wound with silver to scarify the pitch—

just before leaving we played one last Vaya,
one last lullaby in D minor…

That’s when you, my cinder, my stranger, re-
appeared, reciting the rosary of your story—

burning flowers, the caravan in flames… my people
dragged me out… bastard doctors woulda took off
this leg… You laughed and slapped it awake.

Listening, my hands obeyed your hands,
your desperate rhythms—til courage failed me, again.
For years, after that, I couldn’t touch strings.

Django, my ghost-man, you vanished.

          ~

Almost yesterday, shaken by a neighbor’s lament,
I learned there’s nothing so sad and so still as
the stillness of a guitar, leaning, in a spider-web
corner, leaning, inside its own shadow—nada,
fretted stick, poor thing! with no memory
of swaying, nor any trace of green.

          ~

I’m old before I come to my senses and dare
to lift my instrument. But you’re here, Django,
a howling croon set loose in my heart, releasing
a rebozo of fire around my shoulders…
you speak now from your belly, still telling—
never stopped—still telling your story…

so my hand kept on playing
          after the flames curled it up—
some gadjo said the man’s magic

gone for sure—but look, I said to the guy,
these crooked fingers fly faster
than ever before over the sound hole’s

fathom… longing for the melting-point of each note—
because even a light bulb sings, tu sabes?
on its frayed filament, singing itself

to pure non-existence

3

My last instrument cost nothing—
everything!—no strings     just air          shimmering
Nuages, le piano du pauvre under branches

Old young man woman, you’re Django by the river
once again in the place where the child-ear
first woke, and the hands caressed god…

Anouman, my guitar, and me
we are slow now, listening
all day and half the night to trees

at the edge of the Seine—
here is the true music, the concert
made by water, I’m crazy for it—

What good are all our songs,
unless they’re an offering to the river?

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