THERE IS THIS MUSIC

There is this music, there is this voice,
beyond prophecy and beyond prediction;
and it flows from the paths in the hills,
from the bodies of those who faithfully make love
to the sound of falling tenements.

And we hold this music in our hands
like the tentacles of a disembodied jellyfish,
drained of poison, neutral as a glass of water.
And we find the right notes to enliven
the limbs of this baby,
this baby with the skin of a lilypad
and eyes of volcanic paper.

And I ask for that voice from the mountains,
and that fire from under ocean floors
to fill me and elevate me
above the powers of the government.

I kiss the stained velvet at the altar,
and face oppression with the poise
and oblivion of the blue heron,
asking the eyes of all birds
to fill my hands and feet with vision
and guide me to the blood-speckled rooftops
of this town.

And we amplify the voices of all those
who have been in hiding, crouching below
the streams of their own music in the air;
and they come as a chorus, and they arrive
from all the neglected places, they come
as a lake of shimmering hands to lift you up.

And even in the filth of cities, even
as you bathe in ammonia and bleach
and the sun is kept prisoner
in a red brick bedroom;
as the paws of the last dragonfly
find a bruised knuckle on the back
of your aching left hand--
there are those who will never abandon you,

and they come from the ghostly framework
of destroyed steamboats,
and they come from the flypaper of forgotten towns,
and they come from a magnetic dimple
on the face of earth's water, to lift you up.