Ate -ba-na-na-too-dah-lah

by Stephen Cramer

This is the liquid mantra that the woman
in the bespangled mumu repeats every three & a half

breaths, practically singing while suit after suit passes
her by on the way to the night’s accumulation

of faxes & the bottomless K–cup. Her voice, tossed
into the uptown breeze, pools for a moment on the ate

before letting itself tumble into the roiling rapids
of ba–na–na–too–dah–lah, the syllables floating so

buoyantly on top of all the city’s offerings — the passing subwoofer’s thunder, the prehistoric groan of air brakes —

like a pebble on a storm–tossed wave, & I sing it
to myself, then I sing it out loud, & it’s a full

two blocks later before the words unknot themselves
& reform into: eight bananas, two dollars.

For a moment I’m let down that this morning’s mantra
had really just been a commercial, so I tune

the meaning out & turn the sounds back into
the benediction that they seem to want to be,

& they rise into the sky & say it’ll all be okay
to those in rags & those in suits, those who understand

what people are trying to tell them, & those
who get things all wrong, & they fall over the city

like a blanket of soot & diamonds.