Noisy Bridge Rod and Gun Club

A pleasant diversion and general cul-de-sac, wholly unaffiliated with John Crowley (click the link below to go there).

Tuesday, February 08, 2011

Handel: Israel in Egypt


Unpublished, mostly finished. At the end of the oratorio Israel in Egypt comes the triumphant voice of Miriam, turned and reflected again and again in the chorus. But I prefer to dwell on the doubt that comes after, or to think of doubt as being bound up inside, the slow sap within the ancient bristlecone pine. Blank verse, mostly, what else. A different poem cam creeping out of Rumi and Herbert, and decided to stay, as the third section.

Handel: Israel in Egypt

Sing ye to the Lord for he hath triumphed gloriously;
The horse and his rider hath he thrown into the se
a

On the hillside one hundred dancers weave
A hundred colors, a million threads bound
In warp to woof, point to counterpoint;
And in each fold and unfolding rise the letters
Of a thousand alphabets and tongues,
Rise as a praise-song by duty left unsaid –
For what has never reached the ear of man
Cannot be a lie, or be unmade.

The song frames each moment’s movement:
A woman singing alone, the first meeting
Of two who will become fast friends until
They are not, the rising wave of a sparrow’s
Wingbeat evading the end of touch.
 I would talk to you of birds although this
Is not about birds – for a wing breaks the plane
of full sunlight and light itself is broken:

By passage through barbules and hamuli
Does one ray divide into many, does one light
Catch itself and pour colors uncountable
Through the narrow pass, tangled in itself
As  sound caught, reinforced inside the body
Of the violin sings the shape of the violin,
So once escaped sings the shape of the room
And again of the body, and of the air.

Light that lifts, sound that seeks the far corner
That would resist, that fights in sullen fits:
Cast cool water on this desert exile
And find faith in faithless, trust in untrusted
Worth in unworthy. I have touched the rainbow
Cast my eyes upwards to see its dust proclaimed
Not redemption but at least hesitation:
A pause in the war of heaven against earth.

*         *        *

To walk here above the desert among
Bristlecone pines is to hear the voice
Of the god of desolation,  to see who readies
Dry limestone for earth, cold mountain wind
For nourishment – for this god tears all else
Away, shears you of your voice and drives
You to your knees, paralyzed, more dead
Than alive and yet more beautiful for it,

Like coral carved from dust and scree.
Nothing alive is older or more slow –
Old in the days of Miriam the prophetess,
Slow as the ash fall when Knossos died –
In the rain shadow of the Sierra range
Each footstep on this land will feel
Like trespass, and the dedications offered
Are to the ground, not those treading it.

An hour out of Bishop and we found them
Where they have always been, dwelling
On the perimeter of what is permitted,
And in these trees death has no dominion.
Yet who would seek the confidence
of a desert god, if this is the choice:
to live forever and know only
wilderness, and the sound of your own voice.

 *       *       *
We learn to live within our accidents
And call them choices taken, purposeful,
Claim that to witness is enough to pull
Free will from unraveling incidents.

When I gave up my heart, what did I yield
That I can still be pilloried by anguish,
The twisting fall I did not wish;
In sickness I hate wanting to be healed.

Love, you do not know me, and as I reject
Naming you, or naming this as love,
Then I do not know you; disallowing all above
As myth and muttering, still I do not act.

Tonight we share the moon, my stupid hurt,
These tears I would not to anyone explain.
I pledged I would be beyond such pain,
That having traded dancing shoes for dirt,

I earned something more than my own contempt:
A second chance to offer company
Of, if not truth then not only a lie,
The chance before god to brush unkempt

Worries into the washbasin, and soon
To sleep.  The silent house bids me promise
You what no one else can see: I kiss
My fingertips and reach out to the moon.

*       *       *
At the end of the sea there is not my song.
Let each note, in each instrument, wander
As one given, let each interval name
Its history, the connections from one to another:
Acquaintance, lover, deepest friend.
Which one am I, as I am passed from voice
To voice, dropped for a moment, picked up
In a pluck, a thrum, the listener’s shy cough.

This was not about birds, but each nightfall
The sky darkens twice as crows come to roost.
Two thousand wings, and in each wing, each eye
Are rainbow, night and the moon.  In silence
They come, have always come, to tree and
Now rooftop. Why in all the land do they
Choose this place. Where shall any of us find peace.
If you know these things, tell me, or let me go.