Sonnets for a missing ke.., p.2
Sonnets for a Missing Key, page 2
until somebody got hurt. The Swede was bound
to that one. It was raining that night, too.
F Major
1
What is received is scaffolding, is a lattice of
bone and boards and screws and posts that give our
feet places to square, our fingers lips to grasp,
but nowhere to lean our backs.
2
Is all snow white? A simple question, the kind
that makes wind for assured ships, set on waves
like shelves, on the white foam of the pushing edge.
Is that snow, too?
3
What support will this snow offer? Where am I supposed
to put my feet, the toes of my boots, as I climb
toward the end of the platform.
We climbed at the language, the idea that
one climbs down. With a little practice, you
said, we could, if we wanted, fall up.
B♭ Minor
1
Blue is nothing, the elephant said, blue
at the edge, the limit, the draped corner.
Brush it over the face an animal, tell
me what it sounds like.
2
It was a story I made up when you
were small. You complained that there
was no elephant in your scribble-scrabble,
you called it, no more elephant.
3
I insisted it was still there,
though I had not seen it the first time.
I wanted to see it.
I wanted to be free enough to see it,
a lantern in a stable, a bat in the soup,
I wanted to be that smart, that free.
C♯ Major
1
The fable is so slowly revealed,
the shadow of it persistent, if unconnected,
like theorems proved by intuition, like
intuitions justified by experience.
2
Storms develop yet always and yet never
surprise, innocent of some raging
philosophical divide, ideas on a beach,
reason washing clean blame.
3
I count the headlights coming our way,
Will you count them, also? The heads come and
go by, like fence posts and bison.
But the story is told with symbols,
concrete and exact, hard defined as
the segments of a caterpillar.
A Major
1
As if before and not again, the rain
finds sills and panes. The rain presses rivers
into mud and memory, alluvial in its mission,
insistent and worried, penetrating and aloof.
2
Fronts and slicing winds, trajectories of pasts
we have chosen, chosen to forget, chosen to
re-color. Have these trees always been here?
Always off-green like this?
3
I remember his last breath. I expected a rattle,
they always talk about that rattle,
but there was none, just breath
that smelled like peaches, sweet and ripe. Hornets
buzz around ready fruit, don’t they?
And occasionally they sting, don’t they?
Other Modes
1 AGITATO
No admixture
No modifying accretion
Debased by nothing,
Predictable, no surprises, rises
How simple? Naive. How naive?
Prattling on.
Children in a playhouse. A toy house
Never on fire.
Uniform and plain.
Homogeneous and clear.
20 LARGO
C Minor
Maybe love, loss of it, just,
Tell me something, something
Darkness. Tell me, tell me.
While you cry, tell me.
Languish, long, sigh,
sentimental fool
All longing, the short of it
The love-sick soul of it
Coming up short, the long
Version, the story.
Versing, the long
Short of it
15 SOSTENUTO
D♭ Major
Don’t look at me like that,
Squinty, coup d’oeil
No laughter, but a smirk?
Call it a smile.
Who are these characters?
What are these feelings?
Devolving into rapture,
Grieving into that maybe smile.
Smiling into grief.
Degenerating into grief.
Don’t look, it is
That squint of eye
10 MOLTO ALLEGRO
C♯ Minor
Contrite vocalization,
Penitent whistling
Conversation between lovers,
between enemies
With god? The friend?
Help-meet of survival
Sighs, disappointment,
never reaching
The circle contains it all,
Though dour, woeful and wretched
No light consuming
No light
5 MOLTO ALLEGRO
D Major
Hallelujah, Eureka,
Boom, bang, huzzah,
Step, into my house
All the way to heaven
Or Paris,
The bridge stands, the children
Sing and sing,
Wipe their mouth-lips
With soiled napkins
Everyone’s lip-mouths
March on, takers,
March on
24 ALLEGRO APPASSIONATO
D Minor
Brooding, slow?
Sad sounds, the sand,
Where is she? Where is
she? She left
What spleen beyond
Some broken window,
Soft melancholy. Sweet lament,
Affect and sweet tea,
Small hands and
Something pink
Choleric, at once,
Unison and green
19 VIVACE
E♭ Major
Love. Love? Love
Pick up, God,
The call is for you, for him
No one believes
You believe and they
They are correct.
Devote is the rabbit
That runs to his doom
Doomed is the rabbit
Well, the rabbit
Love, belief
Love, rabbit
14 ALLEGRO
D♯ Minor
Agitation, so deep distress,
deepest, wah, wah,
Fear and hesitation. Out
of last breaths,
Breathing out, anxious,
jumpy, perturbed
Strained. Every fear a fear,
tremulous heart
The rain is dark
The rain is deepest
9 LARGO
E Major
Garish cries of joy,
Long smiles
Delight? Ironic? Late
Pleasures, laughing
Real. Noisy. Sing down
The moon and the
Shoebox of sketches,
Toolbox of dreams
Shouts of joy,
Delight?
4 LARGO
E Minor
Again, naive, again
Sadness, but never you mind
Sigh without complaint,
Lament and move on
Why cry? Hope hangs
On doorknob strings
Resolve that other key
And that one, too, calmly
Cry why? Lament
Like water, rocks
Rock against water
Ripples
23 MODERATO
F Major
A breeze, silence, breath
Complacence
Sparrows, swifts a cloud,
Drizzle and peace
Peace, outcropping, a
Step and a seat
A rock, no ledge,
Blue like space
Like space, like tenderness,
Resting, nesting swifts
18 MOLTO ALLEGRO
F Minor
A dungeon, a pit,
A pillow with no head
Grind to a halt, long
For that hole
That end, deep, deep,
Put me face down
Light down, dark
Down in that hole.
The hole where
Water is flat
13 LENTO
F♯ Major
Take the knight, the
Night and resolve the Queen
Relief, resolution, solace
Maybe succor
Succor, maybe victory,
Fierce struggles
And echoes that refuse
To repeat
The echoes refuse
Refuse
8 MOLTO AGITATO
F♯ Minor
Gloomy, ill-lit, gloomy
Dark eyes at night
Passions and dogs,
Unhappy dresses
Language mumbly bumbles,
But does so clearly
Scarred and scared
Ochre and rust
Rust and ochre,
grit and dust
3 VIVACE
G Major
A deckhouse, fire
Songs recalled
Satisfied, like cake
tender, true
Peaceful, every word,
Unmoving water
Moving water, capped
white, riffles, rocks
Faithful, fated
Heart and stem
A cabin, a bothy
Where songs recall
22 MOLTO AGITATO
G Minor
Unease, aggrieved
Plans stunted, stalled
Worries and gnashing,
All bad-tempered,
Displeasure, dreams
That end without flying
alveolus and aspect,
Separate rooms
A lodge here
One there
17 ALLEGRETTO
A♭ Major
Death, death
Expiry and done
Grave and done,
Decomposition, judgment
The circle contains,
The circle circles
Shapes find darkness,
Fathomage
Putrefaction and
Performative
12 PRESTO
A♭ Minor
The heart can’t breathe
The heart can’t
The heart can’t
Lament and Wail
Against the wind,
Train, squeezed tracks
Pulled brakes, no
Friction, all friction
Friction
Friction
7 ANDANTINO
A Major
Ah, youth, love,
Beloved again
Declare, assert
Satisfaction and innocence,
Dance, hop on one foot,
On any foot
Beloved again
When parting, loved
Dance on two
Feet or one
2 LENTO
A Minor
Relative, light
Water at sunset
The color is tender,
Ironic and new
The crying is real,
The crying is not real
The real is torn
Of light
Tender is the water
That washes the undercut bank
21 CANTABILE
B♭ Major
Joy cannot be ignored,
Though almost illogical
Left confuses right
Confuses left with
Simplicity? What meaning
Is definitive?
There is no confession here,
But song, sing, song
Like an indecisive bird
That has made up its mind.
16 PRESTO CON FUOCO
B♭ Minor
Dressed like midnight
Flowing like mightnight
Surly, smiling
And a god that cares little,
Suicide sings in this
Room, behind
These shades,
Smiling like midnight
Like midnight
Smiles like mindnight
11 VIVACE
B Major
The colors, the colors
Wild like asters
So many, glaring,
Rage and fury
Dreams and denial,
Reds and pointed
Mustards, rain
And an orb of jealousy
Colors with edges
Like so many asters
6 LENTO ASSAI
B Minor
Long suffering,
Compliance and allocation
Waiting for the sun,
The sun waiting
For calm, its own
Morning, fate
Rain and fate
Admeasures and time
Rain and fate,
Caterpillars
Biographical Note
Percival Everett is author to more than thirty books of fiction and poetry. Among them, James, Dr. No (PEN/Jean Stein Award winner), The Trees (finalist for the Booker Prize), Telephone (finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), and Percival Everett by Virgil Russell (finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award). His novel Erasure was made into the film American Fiction. Everett is also a painter, his works having been shown in the US, France, and Italy. He is a Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California.
Percival Everett, Sonnets for a Missing Key
