When I think of the taxi driver,
also I think of London’s birds
who only sing at night,
the one silence left to be heard in.
It’s the Muslim driver from Pakistan
who steers me two hours through traffic from Gatwick
to St. John’s Wood, where the rich Americans live.
His mother’s ill, he says; they’ve brought her to London,
the father remaining. Remaining with his own
upholds him, he says, and I’m fingering
the deep gash in the upholstery; I’m down
to the steel. “We try to forgive,
Madam,” he says, “but when Americans
burst down our doors with guns. . . .”
Birds live completely inside their song,
throwing it out at intervals like a plain chant,
clear notes, each a single insistence.
In the night it enters the consciousness
like a dream hidden under bed sheets,
or pressed to the pavement under the heaps
of garbage bags in the street.
A single voice, like the one Palestrina wrote in
to sing the Scripture: all the others
in the background, holding their long notes.
Before him, Pythagoras and his triadic tones
gathering up our Western chords like small armies.
Even though others may call out while we sleep,
all we can say is “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”