OBLIGED
(In Memory
of W.H. Auden)

As a modern poet
Auden in his realization
that words are a conduit
of the spirit's creative love
obliged his readers to quit
expecting concepts
that we learn (as in Latin)
will fall into the same pattern
calling us
with avuncular recognition
to his verse's entertainment
often located in his brain
at his nerve endings
from a lexicon and dictionary
(which are his renderings)
we once read in the library
are merely from his train
of arbitrary remnant thoughts
(and not his pretending)
which suddenly move us
as we learn to soften
(our contrary beginnings
and endings)
and our out of the question tones
in our exemplary life
are not permanent
with its accents
of eloquent
muscular generalizations,
we must now own up
and adjust to grown up
taking the refrains
(in own rife history
of dry bones)
with its own variety of strife
(yet often we secretly know
as scribes within)
how in a vernacular society
we multiply
the spectacular answers
from postscripts
of a century ago
that once proposed
the pure sonority
of ballet dancers
in those bits
of music chits composed
from a melody once classified
in critical tablets
up the scale
side by side of another's ego
are really only our vertigo
which will not fail,
now as Beats we are far away
from the vibes
of a classical or lyrical time
into a subscribers jazz
without tribal images
of the past
but making
an all new grammar
which will outlast
(as a verbal conflict)
in our time to hammer out
any small redundant phrases
out of our philology
to connect
and to direct
a proud and roaring
yet coherent culture
to elect and sing out loud
with pleasure,
not to disdain
the old fashioned phases
but now to expect
an impassioned future
in a leisurely relaxed age
to subscribe, inspect and praise
(as heard in a tenor sax)
with an experimental language
of the reigning Word
from an elemental jazz skeptic
where statements and riffs
sound out to be
(open to our new relaxing voices)
and to be critically reset
in the Blues of wonder
taking up the secret refrains
from an underground thunder.