The Sound of the Tone
Poets get the advice
Krishna gave Arjuna: “You’re *that –
whatever you are looking at.”
It sounds so moral. Don’t forget,
however, the context and consequences:
Arjuna is an archer,
a warrior. Listening,
he realizes he can kill
his millions of enemies
without qualm; they’ll all be back again,
and in eternity they are he.
Imagine a poet sitting at a desk,
you on the other side. He takes out
a gun, and holds it in one hand,
turning with the other
the pages of his oeuvre. Which
he reads aloud, pausing
often to ask you
whether you like it, to compare
one poem with another, and
what you have learned from it.
About yourself. – Allowed
to leave, understandably shaken,
you stagger into a Starbucks.
There, at a table
distant but never distant
enough, is one of those invasive, all-pervading
voices. It may be bass
or treble, not even particularly loud,
and oddly there are never two of them
(if there were, would they hear each other?).
The person or people
it talks to appear undismayed, even
appreciative; if they shun
the voice when they can, if they hope
to leave it forever, you’ll never know.
When someone approaches
that table to complain,
which happens rarely, the response
is bemusement or outrage, seldom
apology; and the protester
seems, in the eyes of the café,
egregious, marginal – all the more so
the more self-righteous. So
you listen without choice
to the details of the facelift
or bypass, shower or point-spread,
the cruise, the reorganization of
garage or office,
remarks of the boss and those let go,
the custody agreement,
the spiritual insight. Until
it seems to you there’s a world
you orbited without suspecting,
or that the world you thought you knew
had an unexpected center
and that you too have such a voice.
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