Help & Division*
Does your chronicle mention me?
I am more prevalent near your end.
When light obscures your scratches,
Ask some birds who talk to you
To explain all the meanings for you.
My country belongs to you.
You can let me in or out.
There is an entry into speech
Both disturbed and enlarged by silence.
What happens is not by agreement only.
Your voice in my head
Now speaks through my mouth.
Insist and sustain.
Invisible but dressed in blue,
I am a detached mind.
A general voice which avoids nothing.
It had to be softened.
For our trust in the dark,
We extend our hands.
Silently fingering the poet,
We encounter our recent past.
They go out but always return.
What persists when the song is over
Becomes the record of a new one
Which begins here.
The flash of a band in the sky
Weaves a new pattern
Follow-able only by itself.
An arrangement of eyes
Follows only us and themselves.
A sign saying "Ultimate Truth"
Claps for attention then laughs only.
When neither of us existed,
This seed began a birth of our fulfilling.
We learned how to smile again
In spite of our immediate surroundings.
Now carry the harp away.
Have no set idea of what will happen next.
Tom Savage
2/28/06
*Written at a performance and discussion of "Milosz Songs" by composer John Harbison
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