The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #118286   Message #2555707
Posted By: Mick Pearce (MCP)
02-Feb-09 - 07:31 PM
Thread Name: Michael Longley's poem about Bix
Subject: RE: Michael Longley's poem about Bix
If this is all of it, it's here: To Bix Beiderbecke.

Mick
Posted by Joe Offer from an archive of the link above. Joe Offer, 18 Oct 2022

TO BIX BEIDERBECKE

In hotel rooms, in digs you went to school.
These dead were voices from the floor below
Who filled like an empty room your skull,

Who shared your perpetual one night stand
- The havoc there, and the manoeuvrings! -
Each coloured hero with his instrument.

You were bound with one original theme
To compose in your head your terminus,
Or to improvise with the best of them

That parabola from blues to barrelhouse.

MICHAEL LONGLEY