Jazz

(for Jelly Roll Morton)

Perhaps we should admit that we were wrong;
that all our vilifying of a man,
whose only crime was that he played a song
of heartfelt strength we couldn’t understand,
was misplaced and misguided from the start.
His manner, though unpolished, blunt, and coarse
(undoubtedly what set the man apart),
is, nonetheless, what changed our music’s course,
combining rhythms, new, with harmonies,
resulting in staccato, strident chords:
a reassessment of our euphony
that altered how our charts could be explored.
   It’s not a crime to fall in with the throng.
   The crime is not admitting you were wrong.