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Your death must be loved this much. You have to know the grief—now. Standing by the water’s edge, looking down at the wave touching you. You have to lie, stiff, arms folded, on a heap of earth and see how far the darkness will take you. I mean it, this, now— before the ghost the cold leaves in your breath, rises; before the toes are put together inside the shoes. There it is—the goddamn orange-going-into-rose descending circle of beauty and time. You have nothing to be sad about.

That bag you packed me when you sent me to the universe— camp after camp I’ve opened it debating whether to unpack— Not yet, not yet— Why did I feel so much in it was dangerous on the playground, too good for everyday, feel those splendid fireworks hazardous to institutions, unmannerly to etiquette, so that, time after time, I found myself saying Not yet? At each new place I faced it, it suggested, Here spread out your things, put on this coat, open this bottle— No, not yet . . . sometimes throwing something out, giving things away, lightening my load. . . . The more I pull out, the more it seems, some days, is left inside, the heavier it is. Sometimes I think this package is almost a door the opening of which careening across heaven could be fatal. Some days now I wonder if I’ll ever dare face my given garments— permanently wrinkled, surely out of date— your travel-thought wasting in its tissue, flesh-corrupt— till I’ve absorbed it, like those stitches that dissolve in an incision where something’s been removed.

(after the painting Á rbol de Blues by Roberto Valadez) The hands of this telling tree pull him from the cobalt bowl sky, bring Jimmy back to the ruins of Maxwell Street hunched in dusk. He stood where strings intersected frets like tracks meeting ties on the Illinois Central’s passage from the Mississippi Delta, then followed the bread crumbs of troubadours to this steel city. Twelve-hour shifts beckoned mexicanos north on the Union Pacific from Piedras Negras to Pilsen, Back of the Yards. How many grandparents, mothers and fathers, pounded stake into soil, snuck or were shoved into boxcars, leapt onto the train’s iron rungs as it shuddered along the rails to foundries where they poured molten metal, faced hot licks of the blast furnace’s growl and hiss? How many lugged themselves north to slaughterhouses that drooled rank puddles at their feet? This, so sons and daughters might step off into another era, choose instruments of wood and metal, axes of their own timbre. This so Jimmy might mix his own palette— tune each turquoise pitch and purple tone into an electric blues old as corridos, but new to the mexicanos who came each Sunday to the market at Maxwell. New to the ears of Roberto, a boy, who would keep his ranchera rhythms close as a pair of old jeans but grow into the blues as he listened to the heirs of Papa Jackson— Johnny Young, Howlin’ Wolf, Nighthawk and Maxwell Jimmy. Now Roberto sits in overalls at an easel, splits the hairs of his brush over how to compose this ofrenda, this homage. How to take Jimmy back in time to the market whose merchants once hustled with tricks for trade ancient as Africa, as Toltec Mexico, Maxwell, whose live blues bands and car radios belting norteño mixes made every Sunday a session. How to take Jimmy back to Maxwell’s gathering spot where he guzzles from an aluminum garden blooming atop his amp, swings his ax— fingers climbing its trunk, plucking twigs— while our feet tap the roots of this wailing tree. Notes skip through alleys of his voice like gravel pinging off windshields, lift a pitch high enough to singe the autumn sky— cousin to the red and green gritos of the barrio only blocks away. Twelve bars spin like metal rims, stack like hubcaps, chords crackling in the tin barrels of his laughter. When the people gather, he sputters, What did the one-eyed woman say? and waits for them to peer into the devil’s draw of his eyes before he roars, Where is my one-eyed man? But we barely get to the punch line, to the end of a set, before the mayor swings his ax, a claw that rips this árbol de blues up by its roots; before Chicago swings its wrecking ball to level homes, stores, restaurants, bars; before troops graffiti-blast, scrub and cinch-sack it all, but one empty wall where someone has scrawled Jimmy’s name among the others in this hall of fame: Willie, Hound Dog, Honey Boy, Sal, the many legends who’ve shared the marrow of their music, of Santana’s hearty soup with the bones still in it steaming with sabor and sometimes weeping.

Looking at the photograph is somehow not unbearable: My friends, two dead, one low on T-cells, his white T-shirt an X-ray screen for the virus, which I imagine as a single, swimming paisley, a sardine with serrated fins and a neon spine. I’m on a train, thinking about my friends and watching two women talk in sign language. I feel the energy and heft their talk generates, the weight of their words in the air the same heft as your presence in this picture, boys, the volume of late summer air at the beach. Did you tea-dance that day? Write poems in the sunlight? Vamp with strangers? There is sun under your skin like the gold Sula found beneath Ajax’s black. I calibrate the weight of your beautiful bones, the weight of your elbow, Melvin, on Darrell’s brown shoulder.

At noon in the desert a panting lizard waited for history, its elbows tense, watching the curve of a particular road as if something might happen. It was looking at something farther off than people could see, an important scene acted in stone for little selves at the flute end of consequences. There was just a continent without much on it under a sky that never cared less. Ready for a change, the elbows waited. The hands gripped hard on the desert.

The gowns and dresses hang like fleece in their glaring whiteness, sheepskin-softness, the ruffled matrimonial love in which the brides- in-waiting dance around, expectantly, hummingbirds to tulips.   I was dragged here: David’s Bridal, off the concrete-gray arterial highways of a naval town.   I sink into the flush bachelors’ couch, along with other men sprinkled throughout the shop, as my friend and her female compatriots parade taffeta dresses in monstrous shades of pastels—persimmons, lilacs, periwinkles—the colors of weddings and religious holidays.   Trains drag on the floor, sleeves drape like limp, pressed sheets of candied fruits, ribbons fluttering like pale leaves.   I watch families gathered together: the women, like worshippers, circling around the smiling brides-to-be, as if they were the anointed ones.   The men, in turn, submerge deeper into couches, into sleep, while the haloed, veiled women cannot contain their joy, they flash their winning smiles, and they are beautiful.

I don’t care how God-damn smart these guys are: I’m bored. It’s been raining like hell all day long and there’s nothing to do.

Gay little Girl-of-the-Diving-Tank, I desire a name for you, Nice, as a right glove fits; For you—who amid the malodorous Mechanics of this unlovely thing, Are darling of spirit and form. I know you—a glance, and what you are Sits-by-the-fire in my heart. My Limousine-Lady knows you, or Why does the slant-envy of her eye mark Your straight air and radiant inclusive smile? Guilt pins a fig-leaf; Innocence is its own adorning. The bull-necked man knows you—this first time His itching flesh sees form divine and vibrant health And thinks not of his avocation. I came incuriously— Set on no diversion save that my mind Might safely nurse its brood of misdeeds In the presence of a blind crowd. The color of life was gray. Everywhere the setting seemed right For my mood. Here the sausage and garlic booth Sent unholy incense skyward; There a quivering female-thing Gestured assignations, and lied To call it dancing; There, too, were games of chance With chances for none; But oh! Girl-of-the-Tank, at last! Gleaming Girl, how intimately pure and free The gaze you send the crowd, As though you know the dearth of beauty In its sordid life. We need you—my Limousine-Lady, The bull-necked man and I. Seeing you here brave and water-clean, Leaven for the heavy ones of earth, I am swift to feel that what makes The plodder glad is good; and Whatever is good is God. The wonder is that you are here; I have seen the queer in queer places, But never before a heaven-fed Naiad of the Carnival-Tank! Little Diver, Destiny for you, Like as for me, is shod in silence; Years may seep into your soul The bacilli of the usual and the expedient; I implore Neptune to claim his child to-day!

The high school kids are so beautiful in their lavender blouses and crisp white shirts. They open their mouths to sing with that far-off stare they had looking out from the crib. Their voices lift up from the marble bed of the high altar to the blue endless ceiling of heaven as depicted in the cloudy dome— and we—as the parents—crane our necks to see our children and what is above us— and ahead of us—until the end when we are invited up to sing with them—sopranos and altos—tenors and basses—to sing the great Hallelujah Chorus—and I’m standing with the other stunned and gray fathers—holding our sheet music— searching for our parts—and we realize— our voices are surprisingly rich—experienced— For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth— and how do we all know to come in at exactly the right moment?—Forever and ever— and how can it not seem that we shall reign forever and ever—in one voice with our beautiful children—looking out into all those lights.

At the center of the lit circle, rising from cotton-candy calf muscles, the White Clown ushers his eyebrows skyward. He grates his ukulele, opens a heart-shaped mouth, inhales— his serenade begins. Now's the time. From the shadows, a blast like a trumpeting elephant: obscene, ragged. The Auguste capers like a fawn, darts away, pads around with his trombone. The gold of the slide slips into and out of the infinite. Everything smells of panther and piss and mint. His gaze fixed on the clash between the welled tears and the awful laughing shoes, the little boy grows ever more grave, ever more severe.