Chicago's Congo

(Sonata for an Orchestra)



Chicago is an overgrown woman
        wearing her skyscrapers
        like a necklace
Chicago's blood is kaleidoscopic
Chicago's heart has a hundred auricles

*  *  *

                                                      From the Congo                                             
to Chicago                                                      is a long treck                                     
—as the crow flies

Sing to me of a red warrior moon victorious in a Congo sky

        . . . show me a round dollar moon in the ragged blue purse
        of Chicago's heavens . . . tell me of a hundred spoil laden
        blacks tramping home from the raid . . . point me out a
        hundred brown men riding the elevated home on payday . . .
        pick me the winners . . . in Chicago? . . . in the Chicago?



Skyscraper pinnacles rip great holes in the rubber balloon
        bag of the sky . . . do spears kill quicker than printed words?
        . . . midnight lies and cobra fangs . . . ask me if civilization
        produces new forms of biting and tearing and killing . . .
        see three million whites and two hundred thousand blacks

        civilized in Chicago

                                                      From the
Congo                                                    to Chicago                                                  is a long trek
—as the crow flies

*  *  *

I'm a grown-up man today in Chicago
My bones are thick and stout
        (when I move to new districts bombings
        couldn't break them)
My flesh is smooth and firm
        (look—the wounds you give me heal quickly)
See how the muscles ripple under my night-black skin
My strength comes not from resting
You should be proud of me Chicago
I've got a lion's heart and a six-shooter
I've got a fighter's fist and five newspapers
I've got an eye for beauty and another for cash
Nothing you've got I can't have



A song dashes its rhythms in my face like April rain
My song is a song of steel and bamboo, of brick flats and
        reed huts, of steamboats and slim canoes, of murder
        trials and jackal packs, of con men and pythons
My tune I get from automobiles and lions roaring, from the
        rustle of bank notes in a teller's window and the rustle
        of leaves in Transvaal trees
I ask you to find a better song, a louder song, a sweeter
        song—
Here's something Wagner couldn't do

State Street is a wide gray band across Chicago's forehead
At night a white face mother moon clothes skyscrapers in
        gray silk
At night when clocks yawn and hours get lazy
At night when the jungle's a symphony in grays . . .
Oh mother moon, mother of earth, bringer of silver gifts
Bring a veil of stardust to wrap this Congo in
Bring a shawl of moonmist to clothe Chicago's body

*  *  *

Between the covers of books lie the bones of yesterdays
Today is a new dollar
And
My city is money mad

*  *  *

Across the street from the Ebenezer Baptist church
        women with cast-iron faces peddle love
In the flat above William Funeral Home
        six couples sway to the St. Louis blues
Two doors away from the South Side Bank
        three penny-brown men scorch their guts with
        four bit whiskey
Dr. Jackson buys a Lincoln
His neighbor buys second hand shoes
        —the artist who paints this town must
        use a checkered canvas . . .

Tired looking houses of brown stone
Ramshackle flats with sightless eyes
A surface car throws a handful of white sparks at cracked
        red bricks
An L train roars oaths at backyard clotheslines
Mornings on South Parkway flats sit like silent cats watching
        the little green mice of buses running up and down
        the boulevard
And only grass has heard the secrets of vacant lots

*  *  *

This song has no tune. You cannot hum it.
This song has no words. you cannot sing it.
This song everybody knows, nobody knows.
It is in a pattern of brown faces at the Wabash Y.M.C.A.,
        a 35th Street gambling place, a parkway theatre
        —you get it or you don't
It is a melody of everything and nothing


I saw twelve stars sitting along the edge of a four-story flat
I saw a moon held by leaflets tree fingers
I heard a shot tear huge holes in the blanket of silence
Later—just a little later—the moon got away and
        the stars stepped back into the sky


There will always be new wordless songs, new harmless tunes
Chicago sings these songs each day