Basquiat, late 20th century, acrylic, oilstick and paper collage on canvas
Loss is not something
worth worrying over, if
truly loss
This
• is the song
So we see here this
river making away
itself, perverting we’ve always known
to its many tangents—
Are not sad
•
The genius might be
to remain unfound, Mississippi
unfounded,
outside the reach of the West, Mississippi
for as long as one can . . .
•
Maybe the river is a boy This
ankle-deep in the mud,
his face arced over is the song
the water brown enough
so that he saw himself
•
Who was designed a slave,
beast of burden, he says
he was—that his blood and sweat, oh
every inch is Finally
this republican land
•
The genius might be
that he was still unsatisfied, we’ve reached
would not be set—
but lay there in the middle of things,
uncombined
•
So he’s been sinking then
this whole time, his whole the end
body consumed
by that mud—till what remained: a figure,
the singing, singular head . . .
of narrative
