Who needs the music of the street in here,
Where hearts leap for real
In chambers of song?
The depths are close to the surface now,
Hitting that rare honest note
Behind the guise of art,
Without which there would be
No feeling at all, just a watching,
Beyond these walls, all the others,
With little left to use one's hands
To clap together in time
For the fire that keeps on giving,
That burns at some remove,
To be captured in a colored jar,
Like buzzing lightning bugs
That speak beyond themselves
Some gift of the endlessness
Of love. The listener rises
From a solipsistic stupor
To greet the troubadours with hugs
And effusing words where none are possible.
In a world of orbits, the open-tuned
Drive toward the core,
Sticky and messy, but absorbed
In something too large to keep
As a sidelong bag of gold
To dole out in intricate seductions.
They have only shapes -- sacred shadows --
The chords with different notes,
The words that beckon the voice.
Love seems harsh in the wind like this,
Enlivening what it touches
As gently, sadly, inevitably
It turns away, like the end
Of a song, enough --
It had run a perfect course
And shone in someone's eyes,
Where what is of the one can rest,
Momentarily, as if it needed that.
