The Sound of Listening
Outside, a window without music
coming from it. & another enveloping
.
the old stone courtyard in cumin & wildly
regular prayers pilgrimaging oceans before
.
finding the right god’s ear. The one I was
promised as a child would forgive my brokenness
.
falls, brittle, in a mirror of autumn fronds.
A chipped church bell somewhere out there
.
rips evening open like a body succumbed
to tooth & claw, scalpel & grief; shame
.
is just another word for refusing to burn
down the palace or for remaining inside
.
while the light swallows everything
but the names for the dead we hoard.
.
Souvenirs, I think I mean. Reminders. The absence
of song, & equally the song. The sudden
.
architecture of a newborn’s laugh,
& equally a mother’s last breath
.
erupting like buckshot over a half-
remembered morning field. Or was it
.
midnight when last slowly bled into first?
Is this even my child, my mother, my shame?
.
Is it my window shouting boldly its silence
or is that my forehead pressed to an unrolled carpet
.
begging the earth for deeper roots? If you say
the world is listening, I promise to ask it. This time.
.
As the constellations within disassemble their myths into distant
light & distant star. Even if I have to close my eyes to see them.