Ginza Samba Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCDCBBCE FEBGBHIJ BKBBKKBCK BBBBKKLC BKBMKBN OEBJPCMQCM| A monosyllabic European called Sax | A |
| Invents a horn walla whirledy wah a kind of twisted | B |
| Brazen clarinet but with its column of vibrating | C |
| Air shaped not in a cylinder but in a cone | D |
| Widening ever outward and bawaah spouting | C |
| Infinitely upward through an upturned | B |
| Swollen golden bell rimmed | B |
| Like a gloxinia flowering | C |
| In Sax's Belgian imagination | E |
| - | |
| And in the unfathomable matrix | F |
| Of mothers and fathers as a genius graven | E |
| Humming into the cells of the body | B |
| Or cupped in the resonating grail | G |
| Of memory changed and exchanged | B |
| As in the trading of brasses | H |
| Pearls and ivory calicos and slaves | I |
| Laborers and girls two | J |
| - | |
| Cousins in a royal family | B |
| Of Niger known as the Birds or Hawks | K |
| In Christendom one cousin's child | B |
| Becomes a favorite negro ennobled | B |
| By decree of the Czar and founds | K |
| A great family a line of generals | K |
| Dandies and courtiers including the poet | B |
| Pushkin killed in a duel concerning | C |
| His wife's honor while the other cousin sails | K |
| - | |
| In the belly of a slaveship to the port | B |
| Of Baltimore where she is raped | B |
| And dies in childbirth but the infant | B |
| Will marry a Seminole and in the next | B |
| Chorus of time their child fathers | K |
| A great Hawk or Bird with many followers | K |
| Among them this great grandchild of the Jewish | L |
| Manager of a Pushkin estate blowing | C |
| - | |
| His American breath out into the wiggly | B |
| Tune uncurling its triplets and sixteenths the Ginza | K |
| Samba of breath and brass the reed | B |
| Vibrating as a valve the aether the unimaginable | M |
| Wires and circuits of an ingenious box | K |
| Here in my room in this house built | B |
| A hundred years ago while I was elsewhere | N |
| - | |
| It is like falling in love the atavistic | O |
| Imperative of some one | E |
| Voice or face the skill the copper filament | B |
| The golden bellful of notes twirling through | J |
| Their invisible element from | P |
| Rio to Tokyo and back again gathering | C |
| Speed in the variations as they tunnel | M |
| The twin haunted labyrinths of stirrup | Q |
| And anvil echoing here in the hearkening | C |
| Instrument of my skull | M |
Robert Pinsky
(1)
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