Shades of precious blues
In the ancient world lapis lazuli was called sapphire
and was as precious as diamonds
found in what we now call Afghanistan dug
and carried to farthest shores, made into jewelry
ground into paint, only used on Mother’s robes
because she was the most precious.
A few years ago I was conversing with a Turkish jeweler
and I asked him why he never worked with gold,
and he looked down for a long moment, and
then he replied “I can hear the blood screaming in it.”
I was buying a lapis bracelet
and the dealer said to me,
‘this is modern, you see’?,
‘the guys up in the (Afghan) hills, they
used to only work in white metal
but now they ornament with brass, since 1989.’
I asked why this was and he said, quite naturally,
they were melting down the Russian gun emplacements.
I wonder if jewelry in ten years will have blue accents
from American steel.
They say that if you listen carefully to his last record
you can hear the hellhounds barking through the sounds
of the train pulling away, taking Robert Johnson back
to the crossroads and someone standing there, the ink still wet
despite ten years of brilliantly indigo blues. That’s not
a recording flaw, it’s the barking, they say, precious and damned
and transforming a gun emplacement
to an ornament on the bridge of the tune.
I watch women I know ground to dust and reconstituted,
stretched thin and hammered, tempered and ground,
used as backdrop in another’s art
put together taken apart,
sung to sleep in gritty voices worn with whisky
and mountain crossroads trails
following across the trading routes,
rebuilt on the other side jangling an arm of brass bangles
wearing ultramarine dresses,
constantly reborn, rebearing, rebirthing
travelling in vain, carrying suitcases
to the rails.
Kate Holly-Clark 2019
