For Skip James

When Skip James sings

‘Hard Time Killing Floor Blues’

with a voice as high and light and sad

as the silhouette of a sparrow

           against a winter sun,

and somehow makes the strings of his guitar

tug shivers

from a heart you’d thought was set,

know that this is music

not from the soul

or for the soul

but of the soul.

Don’t expect

to find in it a flake of comfort.

It pretends to answer nothing,

offers no guidance or praise.

This is no hymn.

It is the song of a sparrow

that flew steeply into the blue,

and came back none the wiser –

          as lonely as the sun.