W.S. RENDRA
Blues for Bonnie
Boston is withered and faded
from blustering winds, awful weather,
and a late night's bad luck.
In the cafe
an old black man
plays his guitar and sings
With barely an audience:
seven couples only
cheating and loving in the dark
billowing gray clouds of cigarette smoke,
like sputtering camp fires.
He sings.
His voice is deep.
He marries song and words
to give birth to a hundred meanings.
Georgia, far away Georgia.
Where stand negro shacks
with leaky roofs.
Earth worms and malnutrition.
Far away Georgia he calls it in his song.
People stop talking.
There is no sound
save that of the wind shaking window panes.
Georgia.
With his eyes clamped shut
the man hails silence
And silence replies
with a swift blow
to his gut.
In his perplexity
he acts the gorilla.
An old and stooped gorilla
roaring
his fierce fingers on the guitar
clawing
as he scratches the itch in his soul
Georgia.
No new customers arrive
The air outside is bitter
The wind blusters even more
And in the hotel
a cold bed waits.
The face of the cafe's proprietor sours
from the loss of an entire night
The black man looks upward
straining the cords in his neck
His eyes are dry and red
As he stares at heaven
And heaven
throws down a net
to snare his body within.
Like a black fish
he struggles in the net
Thrashing about
in vain
With anger
shame
and futility.
The wind beats across Boston Commons
Whistles in the church towers
and tears the night to shreds
The black man stamps his foot
as he sings his oaths and curses
His white teeth shine
in a tight grin of revenge
His face is dirty, wet and old
like a moss-covered stone.
Time, like a flood
overwhelms his weary soul
And in the middle of it all
he feels in his leg
a tremendous jerk.
Surprised
and near incredulous
he feels
the rheumatic cramp
rip through his limb.
In the performance tradition
he refrains from surprise,
and slowly stops
slowly rests on his stool
a cracked vase on a stand
in a secondhand store.
And only after drawing a deep breath
he begins to sing once more.
Georgia.
Far away Georgia he calls it in his song
His wife's still there
Devoted but suffering
Black kids play in the ditches
not at home in school
The old ones are drunks and braggarts
and ever and forever in debt.
On Sunday mornings they go to church
specially for negroes
where they sing
spellbound by the hope of the coming
and their absence of power on earth.
Georgia.
mud sticks to shoes
windowless shacks
Suffering and the world,
one as old as the other.
And heaven and hell
time-worn, too.
But Georgia?
Dear God,
Even after running so far,
Georgia is still on his heels.