Hard to explain why,
but when I first heard it
his music made me laugh,
not at it, but with it,
in delight, the sound soaring
above the rhythm, the little
hints of other melodies
causing me to chuckle.
And today, sixty years later,
I was listening to the radio
when one of his records
came out of the speaker,
a familiar one I’d listened to
at least a hundred times,
and I heard myself laughing
as if it was something new
and never heard before,
and opening up a new world.
© Jim Burns
Picture 12013958, original artwork by Tess Hines, image copyright Mary Evans / Tess Hines Designs
Jim Burns was born in Preston in 1936, and now lives near Stockport. He left school at 16, worked in a cotton mill and elsewhere, and spent three years in the army. He edited Move (1964-1968) and Palantir (1976-1983). He has been a regular contributor to Ambit (1963-2013) and Tribune (1964-1994). Publications include Laying Something Down: Poems 1962-2007 (Shoestring Press, 2010), Streetsinger (Shoestring Press, 2013), Let’s Do It, and Late Poems (Black Light Engine Room Press, forthcoming), as well as eight collections of reviews and essays, the most recent being Paris, Painters, Poets (Penniless Press, 2017).
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