Essay on Music

In childhood I sang over the stream 

at the bend where it folded into itself, 

forming a grid, warbling. I’d recite 

the popular songs of that age, straining 

to only mimic how I heard it sung

on the television or radio 

or father’s portable walkman. The pitch 

or inflection I heard I took as law,

fearing the shame of some observer, out 

of sight, fast-moving, in the cedar-limbs,

perhaps. “Inventing must be transgression,” 

I thought atop my boulder, the tiny

altitude I could manage, not the new 

song that threatened to terrify and change.

& terror comes, after work, chewing 

sweet bread at the station platform, you hear 

a strange note in the familiar song 

that causes the ground beneath to shift. 

You think whatever system holds the earth

could shatter, you could fall, fall endlessly—

that the ground itself could slant, like a latch or lid

opening, and toss you, cast you aside—but the land 

stays still, it is the shod feed you stand on 

from which the hot swaying sensation comes.

The body tires of its circular 

motions, replies, at times, to the mind, but 

the sound from the song, it was like a wall 

of water rising, far from any shore—

a blue tower accumulating height 

over the horizon (the tower lacks

design) & steep enough that its return—snapping 

back to neutral like a band—would reform 

the place it rose from, all ensuing waves. 

I mean I find the stuff deceitful, song 

like humor, color, time, the erotic, 

makes fools of us, thoughtless, gasping for air.  

Something of the effect of the group— 

belonging—not doubting the pause without

sound. You were never at home in language. 

You’ve heard of others surviving

without intoxication, consuming 

only to satiety, milk and bread, 

et cetera—that bouts of hunger strengthen 

focus, permit alertness—parsing from

day’s electrical thrum (railcar, alarm

construction) the foreign tone demanding

an audience, demanding some forsaking 

but the late train arrives, song falls away—

Music’s hidden subject is surrender 

and the same is true of silence—the cold

static like what’s inside a cube of ice.