Paris.
Here where music rockets echoes down
the long miles of metro tunnels’ maze
does the soul of jazz live.
These narrow tubes hold sudden death and eternal life–
music linking both.
Hot, cool, black and blue,
the ebb
and swell
of licks as old as Buddy Bolden
new as this week’s concert-posters
vie with each other in those rhythms of blood
older than humanity.
Here the saxophone
burnished gold
blows hollows in the night
behind our dreams.
Here the strings of guitar,
bass, and banjo
slide silver lines of faith
around our fears.
Jazz came from America, riding the beat
of old slow trains
long travelled into the night.
Jazz there is fading
with the last hobo train whistle
leaving packets of memories
only in El station shadows
and in the cajun streets of its birth.
Here Jazz lives in every Gare and Bahnhof;
where the steel rails still rule each journey.
Winding gold stories from the straw of each passenger’s dreams.