THE
CRAZY ORGAN GRINDER
MONKEY GUY
Sometimes at sunset the man with the monkey
comes playing his music in the streets below :
children laugh and mothers smile : things of
the moment stop still for good cheer. I don't
know why - I always took it as sad, a music
both dark and profound. It was 1924, and
I still remember being there : Aldo Cavalcanti,
the name I went by then. Previous incarnations,
like my father and his kin.
-
I thought I'd forget it all but now I remember everything.
The grave of Lilly Omadoro, all those lilacs, and
the horse, pulling her glass-front wagon, the
funeral hearse. Gates of Heaven, on Gun Hill
Road, in the Bronx? Memory fails precision,
yet that's what I recall. A sadness too.
-
The hundred trees were thick with green as we
all slowly returned home. A Prince Street tenement,
and no one talking. The music guy came by
unknowingly - I gave him a dime to go away.
He almost cried for his mistake. 'I'm a'so sorry,
I did'na know this, I'm a'sorry again.' And
he left. The language was funny, but I
understood. He was gone, and we
all stayed sad.
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