Roomful

 

©Steve King 2024

All rights reserved.

 

(A reworking of a prior post)

I am in a room

That is filling with their words,

Each sound rising as if it were anew,

Separate still,

Ever out of sorts.

 

I know them even now,

Before they ring complete,

Imagining the fair call to come,

Every first and last, 

And visions set to fall between:

How these airs must slip their way,

Now free from all obscure and beaten shores.

 

Perhaps no one may know them in my way,

The way that I have heard them told,

The way that I do feel them call

In this dark room.

 

But each such knowing must suffice

As well as any other knowing may,

As fair as theirs might serve for mine,

Were I inclined to hear them say.

Were my own words destined to stay.

 

Here, the search for every solace;

Grappling for the soul of  every song;

Shrinking only from the silence.

Well we know the keenest word,

May never chime for long.

 

Extolling and abjuring, as we do,

Loosing all desire to condole,

Mirages set to lure the disappeared,

And even all the restless dead.

Enough to fill a world we would say,

If gaining respite only for the day.

Crafted for the one, ready then for each,

For those who suffer raptures, ofttimes near,

That yet must hover, ever out of reach.

 

With hopes that every sudden word

Might serve for any song:

The voice of a small hope, somewhere

Beneath this noise, this stir,

This teasing, always on the evening air.

 

As if there really were a song

For every word that spawns

In small dark rooms.

 

As if the touch of just these jumbling dreams,

Might fare enough to carry us along.