The-Hummingbird-s-Cage(68)

Then it was my turn.

Olin was beside me on the bench seat, and stood to let me out. He squeezed my shoulder encouragingly.

As I made my way to the podium, I was suddenly very grateful for the Chianti—I was sure it was giving me the courage to go through with this and not bolt for the exit. It nearly steadied my hand as I adjusted the microphone. I was grateful for the darkness of the room that blurred the faces all around me, and for the many brands of beer Mahenny stocked to loosen up the audience.

I stared down at my papers and cleared my throat.

“This is for a woman I met in the café,” I said. “Lula told me about a cemetery back home in Mississippi—a black cemetery, mostly forgotten now, being farmed over. It’s called ‘Brother Stones.’”

I couldn’t stop my hands from shaking. I drew a deep breath and began: Brother stones rise to the plow,

crack the topsoil

in a catch of breath

audible only to the blue boneset

and the Quaker ladies.

A barren harvest of white stones,

then seed is thrown back:

soybean and cotton.

This gravel road between Dunleith

and Long Switch runs past

an empty space

where the Baptist church

once stood, dug up by its roots

twelve years ago to become

another wide load rumbling

across the Mississippi Delta,

a far piece from empty sockets

in the fractured earth where

uprooted metal markers lay,

one by one.

“There was no cemetery there.”

There was a child, seven,

cradled his head and rolled

to the kitchen floor

of the shotgun shack.

There was the child’s brother.

There was a young man, drowned

in the River, his great-grandmother,

dead of the “sugar.”

A hundred others or more

planted in this earth,

a quiet population

under a blowing field of cotton,

a disjunction of bones and teeth

rising like smooth stones

through the earth,

a terminable progress

from this place where they are not,

up toward the cotton in fruit,

toward the topsoil, sunbaked to fissures,

toward the vigorous light,

to break the fresh furrows finally

with a gasp.

I could hear murmuring as I switched papers, smoothing them under the bright podium light, still struggling for control.

“And this is for Keyes, an Englishman who passed through Morro with a raven named Gruffydd. I call this ‘Six Ravens at the Tower of London’”: They are the darlings of the Yeoman Warders

who named them after regiments

of the Queen, who feed them

eggs and bread and meat,

who clip their wings, jealously pinch back

their bold growth

toward the sky.

They perch regal and wild and wary

on the wrought-iron gate, dwarfed

by the thousand-year stones

of the White Tower.

Here, a captive Welsh prince once leapt,

spread his arms and

did not fly.

If these creatures fly off,

England will fall.

By royal decree, then,

they will never leave.

For four hundred years these stones

have been their keep.

Their black, bottomless eyes

stare at a silence worn smooth

by a river of centuries,

restless as the London mist,

tameless as Cuchulain’s

horses of the sea.

A thousand voices speak to them

each day in every tongue

but their own.

I gathered my papers. Without daring to look at the audience, I left the podium.

As I stepped from the stage, the applause began. The other readers had had their share of applause, of course, but this applause—this applause was for me.

This was mine.

And it felt . . . wondrous.

At the booth, Jessie and Olin hugged me in turn. Then Simon was standing in front of me, looking unsure. I laughed breathlessly. “I’d better sit before my knees buckle,” I said.

Back in the booth, Simon leaned across the table. “You were marvelous,” he said.

“I was okay. But I appreciate it.”

My head was spinning so fast I still can’t recall the last reader of the night—for all I knew, it could have been Yeats himself.