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My
road lies in darkness…
--Charlie Musselwhite
The epic ends badly, the hero so at a loss in
the gauzy
Gray meshes of an inadequately realized underworld,
That even the bull-maned monster might seem a poor
Simulacrum, lurching, lopsided, from the maker’s failure
To imagine, if not a way through, at least a sign of forgiveness.
At least a ripple in the fabric of things, suggesting an off-
Stage fan, a spirit exterior to all this absence, even
Of longing, even of pity for the poor soul traveling there.
Still, there is such single-mindedness about it, all
Those lines repeating themselves, the hands fumbling across the same
Scrim in every direction, it is hard not to believe how the first
Audience must have sat, in a trance of anticipation, hearing
The notes between the notes in that recitation, which
Was neither mode nor its exclusion; what’s heartbreak
Without some possibility? It’s easy enough to dismiss—
Metaphor, and not the best, a fragment noted in the canon’s
Margins for historical interest and good intentions—but I
Thought I understood as I looked up why I’d never understood
The blues, the eternal repetition of those three chords,
The way the notes bend and gasp. You have to believe
There’s no way out but out, that the changes are no change,
Nothing to spare, nothing to see except the scene, played
As written, taken as it was never meant to be read.
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