So I would hear out those lungs, <br />The air split into nine levels, <br />Some gift of tongues of the whistler <br /> <br /> <br />In the invalid’s bed: my mother, <br />Warbling all day to herself <br />The thousand variations of one song; <br /> <br /> <br />It is called Buckdancer’s Choice. <br />For years, they have all been dying <br />Out, the classic buck-and-wing men <br /> <br /> <br />Of traveling minstrel shows; <br />With them also an old woman <br />Was dying of breathless angina, <br /> <br /> <br />Yet still found breath enough <br />To whistle up in my head <br />A sight like a one-man band, <br /> <br /> <br />Freed black, with cymbals at heel, <br />An ex-slave who thrivingly danced <br />To the ring of his own clashing light <br /> <br /> <br />Through the thousand variations of one song <br />All day to my mother’s prone music, <br />The invalid’s warbler’s note, <br /> <br /> <br />While I crept close to the wall <br />Sock-footed, to hear the sounds alter, <br />Her tongue like a mockingbird’s break <br /> <br /> <br />Through stratum after stratum of a tone <br />Proclaiming what choices there are <br />For the last dancers of their kind, <br /> <br /> <br />For ill women and for all slaves <br />Of death, and children enchanted at walls <br />With a brass-beating glow underfoot, <br /> <br /> <br />Not dancing but nearly risen <br />Through barnlike, theatrelike houses <br />On the wings of the buck and wing.<br /><br />James Dickey<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/buckdancer-s-choice/
