A Song alone

 

 

I once sang a song alone,

the strings of my throat avibe,

the plectrum of my heart in place.

No one listened, no one heard,

yet the very walls inclined.

I once chanted a psalm unwritten,

the zither of my spirit wrung tight,

The dusty air with sonor

left the antiphon unsaid, unvoiced.

I once composed a dirge,

the chord of my tongue in D-minor,

for no one

and they didn’t weep.

I once rejoined a wedding hymn,

the organ of my lungs billowed,

like the descant of royal flute

played by none

yet answered by spring’s bloom.

I once tuned the tympanym of my lips

to twirl,

dancing like heavenly spheres

lost in the blink of an angel’s eye.

Ein Klein Nachtmusik

 

 

At last, falls the curtain,

still, dread velvet weaves the quiet,

a flurry of feathers, ancient tracks,

Aqua regia and wheaten witches’ moons.

How can I connect

the sacred and profane, the lofty and lowly,

the many strands of soundless symphony?

Do the trees answer life and death,

motherhood and loss?

Do lunar phases mark love’s mood

both tragic and elated?

Can the eloquent calligraphy of frost

record seasons, longings and sighs?

Is she Diana who births the night,

or Nyx spreading her inky cloak?

Is it the she-wolf, wraith or sprite

who strikes the danse macabre entwined?

Is this the lesser time of God,

or the penance to repair what’s lost?

Of snow and ashes, would I be remiss,

of that noiseless time when destroying angels pass.

In the lightless underworld,

do owls hymn thee?

When fearsome things tramp afoot,

does the unknown, unseen, unremembered cry?

There is appointed the time to awake

and to die.

After every day surely comes night

on rodent feet

singing the unsung requiem

taps on a graveyard bugle,

Nunc dimittis in velvet black

because the white of dawn may wake them.