The Chord

©  by Steve King

All rights reserved

1.

I sometimes hear so much,

listening relentlessly,       

wrapped in high solemnity,

gliding through the grand design

of vast symphonic harmony;

and sometimes too

within the passing threads

of lurid, jazz-infused improv…

or lingering in funerary drones,

buzzing voices lowered

in purest dread tones;

and always in a stinging riff of rock and roll:

taut strings stretching to their ends

to spin a dance of fleet arpeggios,

stuttering like broken speech,

balancing atop that odd backbeat.

And I have heard the music breed

in small measuring breaths

when leaves stir

and hollow spaces speak

with the songs of wind,

each night the winds across the valley,

echoing some furthest peak.

And from the very center,

the roar of fire gods,

their murderous bass notes,

song emergent from the core;

a universe of tones

hardly random or ill formed;

a reservoir of nascent sound

in which all other harmonies abound.

2.

Then, too, come strange calls

alive to greet my listening,

wandering through new discovered streets,

to find a certain way:

lamplight to lamplight,

slipping between shadows,

past shuttered doors and darkened alleyways;

stepping deftly

around children without faces,

there, amid each rising moan and incantation,

cantatas of regret

that stir long in dark places;

lamentations of desires undone,

abject songs of silly midnight dares

invoking quick embrace and needy stares;

last calls and come-ons to indifferent ears;

even the measure of caesura

when the weight of all emptiness

shall have won…

…as when darkness shutters every yearning sense,

and arms hang empty at the sides,

empty…empty…empty again,

surrendering to the usual absence,

while one devises painless ways

to make decent amends,

while all the old longings intensify;

while the shadow steals

to fill another vacant dream

and color the old rhymes—

the mind rehearsing different ways

to sing old songs,

wanting only the one decent key,

a constant cadence again in each familiar space,

reminding, to be sure—

within the hollowed meter

of each muted phrase—

of ancient gladnesses,

and, looming in the mind’s half-light,

imagined facades of repose…

3.

So now, within these attic shadows,

folded deep beneath a night,

please to linger with me here,

listening, quiet at the last,

waiting for fled things to reappear;

when silence shall again retreat,

to fill some other’s emptiness;

the music turning as the first,

stillness yielding in its train,

every shadow singing out.

And please to tell me why,

with all the music

waiting to be heard,

there still rings ever clear in memory,

in singing presence lost only to time,

the unrelenting tones,

diminuendo,

in lyric voice that I would gladly claim no more,

chiming as a solemn chord,

the one echo I try so to ignore:

the biding murmur of that distant wave…

breaking slowly on the rising shoal…

forever set to cast its falling note…

and sing, relentless, to its empty shore…

gathering its long-abandoned airs,

to measure me within the hold

of  once familiar strains.

4.

And yes, the way old words lie waiting to be heard again;

the way old words would once again be said,

the way old words lie waiting for new song…

as if they might gently live on,

as if meaning may yet cling—

all else gone.

All else.

Everything.

5.

That soft postlude to resonate

across ensuing days;

always to replay,

ever to unfold,

while all the music else,

so charmed in each refined reply,

yields, surely as a cresting tide

called homeward by its distant moon,

slipping sure away.

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and d’Verse Poets Pub Open Link Night

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