.
.
Charlie Parker at the Three Deuces, New York, N.Y., ca. August, 1947
.
.
An Elegy For Charlie Parker
I can see you sitting outside the Reno
where the Mob’s tight hold makes dollars spin.
You are scuffling the dust, then homing in
whenever Lester launches his solo.
Or I see you breathe at the music’s source
through a taped and battered alto. Through scale
after scale you soar, egotistical,
obsessive, chasing sounds no ears endorse.
Later on the hipsters hailed you –
Benedetti and a crew of fanatics
who, trailing wires in cellar bars, left mics
in place that hoarded every note you blew.
You had known from the start you’d never win,
even though your style became a language
for all. And Lester also shared that rage,
that anger that sticks like pigment in skin.
.
.
___
.
.
David Cooke was born in England in 1953, although his family comes from the West of Ireland. In 1977, while he was still an undergraduate at Nottingham University, he won a Gregory Award, and since then his poems have been published widely in the UK, Ireland and beyond. He has also managed, in spite of long periods of poetic silence, to publish seven collections of his work. He will have a new collection out at the end of the year. He is the editor of the online literary journal, The High Window, which he founded in 2015, and which can be viewed by clicking here
.
.
Listen to Charlie Parker play “Out of Nowhere”
.
.
.
