Sunday Poem

Listening to Sun Ra, Birds Convene Outside my Window

A friend of mine likes to chide me
  for what he calls my bourgeois proclivity
  to listen only to music played in time.

So each time this afternoon I’ve put on
  volume one of The Heliocentric Worlds
  by Sun Ra, I’ve thought of that friend,

and wondered whether he would let this
  qualify as sufficiently experimental,
  though it isn’t the full recorded chaos

he often argues is the only moral
  kind of music left. A silly pretense
  of his, but one I can’t help sometimes

measuring myself against. And, I admit,
  though there are stretches of incoherence
  on this record that try my patience,

I can usually find a definite plotting,
  particularly the sections where the bass
  begins a walking line the other instruments

organize themselves around; making what
  Sun Ra, in his own way chiding one critic’s
  attempt to classify his compositions

as free jazz, more accurately dubbed
“phre” jazz: the ph signifying the definite
  article, and though I don’t know how

in English to make that claim cohere,
  it’s an assertion I’ll grant Sun Ra
not just because he may have meant

the definite article of some form of speech
  not yet part of human understanding,
  but also because it imbues everything

in his songs with purpose. There in the word,
Ra said, indicates the sun, so that his music
is the music of the sun. And really,

though I don’t hear on this record
  the enveloping whiteout of sound
  I think of when I try to imagine the music

of the sun, I appreciate his gesture
  at something so large. And, in the most
  chaotic moments, where I hear him

fumbling with the meter, when Sun Ra
  lets out a too-quick flurry of notes and the band
  behind him lets the song dissolve into

something like the noise of two dozen
  pinched balloons deflating as they streak
  across a room, I hear in it their collective

enthusiasm, all of them overeager to enjoy
  at once all the notes in the song, which
  validates the notion of this music as

a perpetual celebration of motion and being.
  Perhaps that’s the thing that’s got
  these two mottle-headed blackbirds

returning to my windowsill each time
  I put the record on. Now, because I’ve made
  my friend’s voice into one of the many critics

always running through my head, and so
  clearly hear his claim to distrust something
  as cogent as the pleasure one might take

from listening to arranged sound, I think how,
  seeing this scene, my friend would say
  that these two birds can’t be lingering here

to enjoy the songs with me; he’d claim how
  they sometimes caw and flap around is proof
  of agitation, their dancing a defense,

a sign they fear the source of such adamant,
  inscrutable music, and he’d say that if there’s
  a lesson to take from the nature these two birds

exemplify, it’s in the way they distrust art
  like it’s some classic predatory foe. Granted,
  I’ve stacked my lines against him; granted,

I’ve heard him sing “Daisy, Daisy, give me
  your answer, do” to his daughter in perfect
  tender pitch, and though when singing it

he did disrupt the tune’s rhythm, it wasn’t
  to deconstruct the body of the song,
  but so he and his girl could exchange

a bit of laughter. But I’d like to think
  he would agree with how I’ve drawn him,
  that this is an accurate description of how

he prefers to think about music, diminishing
  the notion that art can provide joy,
  calling me either wrong or naive

when I disagree. I can see him citing the way
  I’ve made a prop of him here as proof
  that coherence is all a false elaboration.

So what can I say to such a claim, other than
  to admit I know no more than he does
  how birds experience joy, and that

my pleasure in this scene comes as much
  from listening to Sun Ra dismantling a melody
  as it does from the wonder of these birds

returning to hop and sputter along my sill,
  whether they gather here by chance, delight,
  or to try to call the song to order.

by Charlie Clark
from Blackbird, 2011