The Sequins on the Holy Ghost (Clara Ward)

Lyrics

[Verse 1]
You grew up
in a Baptist household
in Philadelphia
where the music
was the architecture
and the architecture
said: God lives
in the space
between the call
and the response
and the space
smells like wooden pews
and the pressed starch
of a Sunday collar
and the specific warm fog
of two hundred people
singing the same note
slightly differently
and the difference
being the point
Your mother Gertrude
managed you
the way a foreman
manages a construction site:
with a schedule,
a vision,
and no tolerance
for anyone
who confused talent
with permission
to be late

[Verse 2]
The Ward Singers —
you built them
into the first gospel group
that played Carnegie Hall,
the first
to play the Newport Jazz Festival,
the first
to take the church
out of the church
and into the rooms
where the church
had never been invited
You did not leave God behind —
you brought God
with you
and dressed God
in sequins
and the sequins
were not disrespect —
they were translation:
the Holy Spirit
in a language
the nightclub
already understood

[Chorus]
The wigs were enormous —
towers of hair
engineered to survive
a two-hour performance
in which the body
was the instrument
and the instrument
did not hold still —
you wept on stage,
you dropped to your knees,
you sang until
the audience
stopped being an audience
and became a congregation
that did not know
it had converted
The performance
was the theology
and the theology said:
if you are going to praise God
you should do it
in the most beautiful dress
in the building
because God
built the building
and God
deserves the effort

[Verse 3]
Aretha learned from you —
sat in the front row
as a child
and watched you
turn a hymn
into a physical event
that the body
carried home
after the song ended
Little Richard
borrowed the shout —
the full-throat declaration
that a song
is not finished
until the singer
has left something
on the stage
that cannot be picked up
and carried out
You were the source code
and the code
ran through every gospel singer
and every rock singer
who learned from a gospel singer
which is all of them

[Outro]
You died at forty-eight —
a stroke
in the middle of everything —
and they buried you
in a gold coffin
with a glass lid
and Gertrude
who had managed your life
from the first rehearsal
died two months later
because the schedule
had only one performer left
and the performance
was over
The sequins are still catching light
in every church
where a woman
stands up in her best dress
and opens her mouth
and the room
stops being a room
and becomes
the space
between the call
and the answer
which is where
you always said
God was standing