GEOFFREY PHILP
For Scratch
Filing past to offer respect to the remains
of the giant who slept in a casket so small
you would have thought it was built for a child
still dressed in his red schoolboy cap and rings
that bedazzled spirits to give up secrets
whispered into the ears of machines
that surrounded him like a wall against a world
that grew more insane with each revolution,
where he offered libations of blood and whiskey
and spun a swirl of sound thick as the clouds
of Lamb’s Bread Colly that blessed his studio.
For only a master of silence could create
a sound so heavy it could shatter notes
into thousands of I-ncient echoes, and, yes,
so light it could lift countless careless Ethiopians
out of their rent-a-tile trance into a space
that obeyed the commandments of dub
and followed his angels past the rat-a-tat-tat
of Sly’s drum kit, the bright allure of Glenn’s horn
into the sonic boom of his craft entering the fire
of our atmosphere, the orbit of nature’s grace.