I am moved by all kinds Of music made by a sympathetic And yearning heart.

I am unschooled in the reading Of notes, of bars and of harmonies. For me the language of music Is breath.

I sway to music and am swayed By it. The hungers that support it Are stoked within me everyday, Every moment, when I lend my ears To listen and when I open my mouth To sing, to proclaim.

The blues of the farmhand, The unshaved working rough nursing His solitude like a beer, the high howls Of leaving trains mix with chants, With melismas of hymns, Gloria Gloriaaaaa, Songs in tongues only my spirit can Understand and speak, Become the Song of Songs within me.

A man not behest by an obsession Of simple things, without form, Like sea foam, evening light falling On the ribbed waters of a lake, The white grinning teeth of cascades. The deep sighs of a woman, the rustle Of skin touching skin, all that implacable Longing for God, doesn’t know music And never becomes music.

I want to take such a man by hand, By heart and bring out the drums of earth, The lutes with moonholes, the guitars Of starlight, the suns hidden in the body Of violins and set him aflame.

I and he, who is also me, Will then listen anew to the first cry Of an infant as it breaks from the womb Of the mother, the last drum beat of the heart Which is taken up by other hearts, the tap dance Of rain on muscle and skull, the rise of water Through the roots and trucks of friendly trees Infecting the silence of what was With music And become a peacable silence.