A WOMAN'S VOICE SEEPING OUT OF THE WINDOWS LIKE A FRAGRANCE

A WOMAN’S VOICE SEEPING OUT OF THE WINDOWS LIKE A FRAGRANCE

A woman’s voice seeping out of the windows like a fragrance

of melodic fire in the rain, her song wavering in and out

of earshot over the hissing of cars, the percussive water.

But one heart resonates with another like echoes

in a big room trying not to make a grand entrance

on a stage designed for petty exits. The sorrow true,

the joy in life unanticipated, and the mystery

of being human to suffer and rejoice in the awareness

of both, an alloy of the worst and the best made stronger

by the oxymoron than either alone, or a bridge

between opposites like a nose in the middle of your eyes.

The lyrics might be blurred like watercolours

smudged by weeping, but the hues of the sound are clear,

and dusk is sitting in the front row of the dawn

with a backstage pass to the apartment across the street,

practising for a Thursday night gig at O’Reilly’s

among the clinking of beer bottles and the clatter of spoons

where the orchids dress up to cheat on the dandelions.

Still, it’s the solitude of the music that will touch

their wounds tenderly as if she were putting a finger

softly to their lips and saying hush now for a moment

and listen to the beauty of your own silence

taking compassion on what hurts you the most,

as if the ghost that was summoned by her music

had come to you privately with a cure for an absentee heart

in harmony with the perfect timing of the rain.

The medium is not the message and the word for it

isn’t experience, though you can’t separate the moon

from its lacustrian reflection on the broad waters of life.

The distinction is as valid as a keyhole in an open door.

A gate that doesn’t even shut out those who won’t walk

through it to see that even their fear of shadows

is rooted in their own starmud like the eyes of strange jewels

that shine in the dark like shy nightbirds in the audience.

The stars whisper offstage to your eyes not to be afraid

of your own radiance, or the chromatic range

of your rainbow refractions unlocking your voice

like an aviary that just let all the bats and butterflies

peacocks, crows, hermit thrushes, nightingales and doves out,

o and the great blue herons, the Canada geese, the killdeer

and quail, and the threnodies of the waterbirds I don’t know

the names of but only have to listen to know they mourn

like fire on the water to judge from the wild asters

of the autumn in her voice that burns like fireflies

in the eyes of the rain, then smoulders like wet cedar

before breaking into stars like sparks in the hay

of the scarecrow dancing with a phoenix in the flames

of a torch singer bound like a heretic of joy to the stake

of a microphone in the high fields she’s setting afire

with her voice, then putting them out in the tears

of the music in her heart like soft chandeliers of rain.

The words we put to our sorrows are as wayward as joy

or the hidden nightcreeks following their own melody lines

like the distant whispers of ghosts through the woods

that will return them to their graves like the mists of the morning

when the sun comes out, soon enough, soon enough

like the glare of the lights after last call as the singers

pack their black coffins like scratched guitars

with scars on their voices even the stars can’t lip synch

without their reflections burning like bridges

in the lyrics of life waterclocking like windows in the rain

you can hear singing all the way down the block

as the music blooms like waterlilies in the gutters of the moon.

PATRICK WHITE