Heart Song
Today is a day for a song.
An elucidatory song that draws you
and I further along toward our
destinytions, a song that rings
unbroken until each can say,
finally, "I am my own country."
First we listen, and after we hear,
we sing--
auricular sidereal tarrying at the
speed of sound, a song sung
somewhere between light and
solidity, composed of each, a great
Mass of praise meant for no one in
particular except the poet-praiser,
moved to sing simply because he is
moved at all.
This is the miracle, read in pages
of a day and flung outward, toward
the sea, a churning-wave-song, a
sound not unlike that unsufferable
cat whose purring sleep-song rises
out of a basket of blankets, sifts
through soft savannah grasses,
along heavy chains constructed of
bone and conjured in the muffled
ease of dream where feet pound
earth, elder sages heal the sick,
where otters hunt great salmon,
where, along the banks of a silver
river the rising smoke of funeral
pyres builds and joins in billowing
clouds of passing, where fruits
grow fat and fall at the feet of
children, children laughing,
children singing, "Gone, gone,
gone to the other shore, gone
together
to the other shore . . ."
A diadem song to stand against
the visceral gods of carnage.
These children dance. They tie
flowers in their hair. And in their
voices, in their one voice, they sing
an unceasing song, "Gone, gone,
gone to the other shore, gone
together to the other shore.
O Awakening!
All hail!"
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