_____________________October 17, 1999
Yo Yo Ma, Yo Yo Ma, you forgot your cello, yo!
Yo Yo Ma, Yo Yo Ma, you forgot your cello, yo!
Think Yo Yo Ma, think Yo,
Another Yo and Ma,
Think “cello.” So
Does he. He
Is his cello; his
Cello is he. He
Rode a taxi
Twenty October minutes
Across the mind
Of town, Central Park West
to Fifth Avenue.
His $2.5 million
Anton Stradivari
1733
Cello fell out of his brain
At $125,000 a minute
Like a very large Brazil nut. O
Yo Yo Ma, you
Got out at your
Fatal
Hotel
And the taxi pulled away
In the trunk the very cello
You played last night
At Carnegie and
Planned to play tonight
At the Anchorage
At Brooklyn Bridge.
Cello waited, patience
Of the inanimate. Kept
Its dignity when found
In some garage in Queens.
“Somehow magic happened,”
Ma said. “The instrument
Is my voice.” More, Ma:
You are only all
You remember; in that case
In the trunk was you.
And the taxi pulled away.
Yo Yo Ma! Yo Yo Ma! You forgot your cello, yo!
Yo Yo Ma! Yo Yo Ma! You forgot your cello, yo!
Yo Yo Ma, they made fun,
But to them I say: Yo Mama!
I’ve been there
Or
Absent.
Brain is a potted meat
Inside our face, and, like
Meat, mind decays.
Cellos fade
To outlines:
Three cellos!, we
Insist, when
There were six, cello
Forests, history
Cello, cello
Of murder, angel
Cello
Winged wood thing
On heaven horizons
When it was only
Hobo
Oboe on some middle-school
Stage ashamed of dust
And wrong notes. Or
We
Say (or say
We mean)
Aquamarine
Cello.
No:
It was alizarin
Crimson.
Cello burdens a tongue
Cannot squeeze it out,
Calendar colander coriander crenellated carbuncled
Camisoled cockatiel, nothing
Close to
Cello. “That’s
The cello”
When no
It’s not. Whisper:
“The cello
Kissed you”
And for life we taste
Luscious maple licks. To
Punish the violins
That hurt us so many years, we
Cry always cello,
No matter the violins,
Cello, only cello
As if cellos
Should follow
But no cello
No jolly good cello
Just unmusical
Us as usual
We! who
Hail the hotel
And farewell
Taxi, see
You never,
Forgotten, cello in taxi
Cello of all time
Taxi of this time
And the taxi pulls away
And we go to our room uncello’ed;
Wherever else we
Are we
Go as memory
Makes us, cruel as strings
To fingertips
And the taxi pulls away.
Memory names
The great betrayers
But never names
Itself.
Yo Yo Ma! Yo Yo Ma! You forgot your cello, yo!
Yo Yo Ma! Yo Yo Ma! You forgot your cello, yo!
Was it Carnegie
Exhaustion, Brooklyn
Bridge nerves, October
Death and passage
Whirling kaleidoscopic,
Cellostorm
In autumn?
Was it all them
Notes you know,
Yo Yo Ma, them
Notes you know how
To play, dancing staves
Impulses on
Axons? Distractions
Of Bach or
Shostakovich? The Chinese
You speak, as you
Say,
“With difficulty,”
The Do and Wanna Do?
Me – Yo Yo Ma – I’m
With you, been
There when
The taxi pulls away
Absent as
The taxi
Pulls away.
Tiny things? I’ve
Told thousands, “Get
Out of my mind,” yet
Day after day
They scrape razor
Bows across
My strings. Fray
Me.
Un-tiny things?
Word, yo: I’ve
Let the taxi pull away
Trunk stuffed with more
Than four
By 1.5 feet
And 37 pounds
(With case).
I’ve left my cellos
All over the place.