Listen to Peter Balakian read this poem. Everything was tangled up in blue. Seeping glaze on the Delft jug,
liquefaction of the Virgin’s silk
as it spread in Titian’s cobalt
to a fleshy embrace and the green meadows
in the distance fade to hammered light.
Light we pulled into a string of glass
that seeped out of the long vibration
of Miles’ Blue in Green
like slow time in the empty lot
after soot and rain and rush,
the Ferry out of sight,
my bones electric with the hum
of the cable of the Bridge at 3 a.m.
and the dying lights of the Bowery.
Bill Evans making the rain thin
to a beam of haze before the
horn comes back from underwater.
