Eternally lured by calypso,
Daddy always wanted to return
to his birthplace, to the Mighty Sparrow.
He knew about heat’s seduction, about steel pans,
maracas, about the Canboulay, all
brewed in the Indies’ crucible of revolution,
underpinning the peg box and scroll
of a violin Daddy also favored—yes, Vivaldi!—
who (his sons said) couldn’t best Jellyroll
Morton and his hepcats blowing with the Nat King
Cole Swingsters in every California beer joint
until the money ran out; Sassy Vaughn singing
“Black Coffee” and “Nice Work If You Can Get It.”
Daddy admitted Duke and Roach (with his Jazz
in 3 / 4 Time) were superior to any minor minuet
but sometimes he had a hunger for a polonaise,
a Schoenberg twelve-tone, a Bartók sonata that
his daughter drowned out with Marvin Gaye’s
“Stubborn Kind of Fellow” and Dizzy’s latest platter.
Still, Daddy reminded us to kiss the ground of Port
o’ Spain where stick fighting’s clatter
gave way to fry pans and oil drums or
anything that could shimmy up a rhythm and
put a dip in the hip of a late-night worker
because that music had given birth to the flim-
flam artists his children were calling musicians—
men twisting their fingers so it seemed
they’d forgotten bamboo sticks, jawbones and
Belafonte blowing into white America—Day-O!—
and oh, we didn’t have a clue about the Akan
or any other African tribe who handmade the first banjo,
calabash, djembe, the call of Zimbabwe’s mbira,
the siren luring our father back to his calypso.