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E.M. Schorb 
for the musical ghost of Blind Lemon Jefferson
Leadbelly, grim with your Cajun accordion, With your harmonica blues, with your knife Flicking down the twelve strings of your guitar --The Rock Island Line was a mighty good road-- Bowing, scraping, whitesuited trainman... Made your pride sick, but you sang, Fast, strong, quiet, like a driven Demon, like you had to get it out Before a razor dumped your guts Out on a blood-mud taphouse floor, Or some drunk crazy rednecks Nailed you up like Christ, in a dangerous world For anybody but most, America, for a black Poet of lowdown places and skyhigh loves. Leadbelly, thirty years hard time murder, Six and a half, sang your way out, ten more, intent, Then Alan Lomax and his bro, John, folklorists-- Makes you laugh inside at night--white boys, Playing--but they get you out again and in The Library of Congress, that grinding Voice part now of something big, like Storm darkness, like that life thing, Love, always beyond somewhere or Crying deep inside, in a dark place, Yeah, big like music, big like that gal you Call Irene! How many Irenes, you think? Even white boys, even John/Alan Lomax, know Irene--you driving them through New York traffic, them folkloring and you Being their folkloring chauffeur. You drink sharp liquor in Harlem, play With Woody Guthrie, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, the Headline Singers--radio too, Hollywood and Three Songs by Leadbelly, A French tour...You show em your razor Stretch marks, your shotpitted pot. Good night Irene I´ll see you in my dreams... All that good hot mean hard American life And Lou Gehrig´s amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. It´s The Midnight Special! Fade me, Death!
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