What is it this cacophony,
this concord of sounds, some sweet,
some not so sweet? It is
the order of things.
The wingbeat of Bonelli’s eagle,
a thunderclap, the song of the hermit thrush,
the city at night – zigzag of siren and horn,
the whoosh of the desert wind.
To read by analogy: columns,
Like tree-trunks, disclose light;
Birds, in the foliate capitals,
Are wide-billed amid fruit
But silent, until this
Radiates through it all.
Then the birds sing, the leaves hiss,
Wind shushes, though air is still.
you who, in what is made of time, end time…
hatched out of dissonance,
the single, held, unending chord or chime…