Musicians strike the instinctive Poem.²
All untapped mysteries & truths of music
Gather into a song of Beautiful Confusion—³
Our bones are frail—our Songs grind Stone!⁴
I only listen to Absolute Music:
The kind where you feel someone
Rattling the gates of Heaven & Hell!⁵
Not words, but the highest coinage of
Human speech melted down become Pure Song,
Something vilely, murderously gorgeous:⁶
Savage music that Golden Mouths
Are sworn to utter!⁷
We don’t sing for others:
We sing to please ourselves—
No, not even that—we just Sing.⁸
We maketh our own Sunrise as we sing—
And turn the dusty earth to Paradise!⁹
I would liken you to a Sleep without
Dreams—were it not for your Songs …¹⁰
¹ Emily Dickinson, Of All the Sounds
² Wallace Stevens, The Auroras of Autumn
³ Nancy Caviale, The Song
⁴ Ghassan Zaqtan tr. Fady Joudah, Strangeness
⁵ Hermann Hesse tr. Damion Searls, Demian
⁶ Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince
⁷ Denise Levertov, Seers
⁸ George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four
⁹ Frederick Tennyson, Skylark
¹⁰ Langston Hughes, Ardella