Mingus in Diaspora

By William Matthews 1942–1997 William Matthews

You could say, I suppose, that he ate his way out,

like the prisoner who starts a tunnel with a spoon,

or you could say he was one in whom nothing was lost,

who took it all in, or that he was big as a bus.

He would say, and he did, in one of those blurred

melismatic slaloms his sentences ran—for all

the music was in his speech: swift switches of tempo,

stop-time, double time (he could talk in 6/8),

“I just ruined my body.” And there, Exhibit A,

it stood, that Parthenon of fat, the tenant voice

lifted, as we say, since words are a weight, and music.

Silence is lighter than air, for the air we know

rises but to the edge of the atmosphere.

You have to pick up The Bass, as Mingus called

his, with audible capitals, and think of the slow years

the wood spent as a tree, which might well have been

enough for wood, and think of the skill the bassmaker

carried without great thought of it from home

to the shop and back for decades, and know

what bassists before you have played, and know

how much of this is stored in The Bass like energy

in a spring and know how much you must coax out.

How easy it would be, instead, to pull a sword

from a stone. But what’s inside the bass wants out,

the way one day you will. Religious stories are rich

in symmetry. You must release as much of this hoard

as you can, little by little, in perfect time,

as the work of the body becomes a body of work.

William Matthews, “Mingus in Diaspora” from Time and Money: New Poems. Copyright © 1995 by William Matthews. Reprinted with the permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved, www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com.

Source: Time and Money: New Poems (1995)

Biography

William Matthews's poetry has earned him a reputation as a master of well-turned phrases, wise sayings, and rich metaphors. Much of Matthews's poetry explores the themes of life cycles, the passage of time, and the nature of human consciousness. In another type of poem, he focuses on his particular enthusiasms: jazz music, basketball, and his children. His early writing was free-form and epigrammatic. As his career has . . .

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