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photo by Veryl Oakland

Archie Shepp, Berkeley, CA, 1971

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Archie Shepp’s Jazz Song

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……….Gather round this coffin and mourn your dying swan.
……….Margaret Walker, “For Malcolm X”

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Shepp, believing in the immortality
of Malcolm’s significance, murmurs,
a few weeks after his murder,
“Semper Malcolm” over disjointed jazz,

“Malcolm,” meaning disciple, meaning
turning his back on the pimp thing,
Malcolm, who voiced hostility to those
who still hold the keys to the garden.

Malcolm, name as elegy, Shepp
mourning six shots in Malcolm’s chest,
his speech barely begun, a podium,
Audubon Ballroom decked in terra cotta

foxes. If one is brilliant, where one begins
is not where one ends, Shepp loosening
his play on his tenor sax, like Malcolm
freeing himself from his rancor

in his letter from Mecca after his Hajj,
Malcolm not destined for
the dimenticatoio, the immense room
where gather all the forgotten.

 

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Susana H. Case is the author of seven books of poetry. Drugstore Blue (Five Oaks Press) won an IPPY Award. Her first collection, The Scottish Café, from Slapering Hol Press, was re-released in a dual-language English-Polish version, Kawiarnia Szkocka by Opole University Press. She is also the author of five chapbooks, two of which won poetry prizes, and most recently, Body Falling, Sunday Morning, from Milk and Cake Press.

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Photo of Archie Shepp courtesy of Veryl Oakland, edited from the original, which included Alice Coltrane (harp) and Jimmy Garrison (bass); Berkeley, CA, 1971

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Archie Shepp plays “Poem for Malcolm,” recorded in 1969

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