From “The Voice of Sheila Chandra”

What represses unhomes in the sound Who has made me what is made me Is a voice just muscles and shape and Breath to phrase a song boats assemble At the mouth of the harbor mouth in Earth you who wrote an ode to silence Never wrote of what is silenced I did Seek all resounding caves let the voice Be lit all the lanterns in the new world we Need the language of stone from string To string quiver in the opening the garden So beautiful Lucifer dark sun of morning No Eden but innocence no expulsion But after • No more will I listen to other than A single note moaned not known I do not here think again what place Presents itself own moan well eye Here body as a battery of the one Moment when it is time to open Your mouth to plug in I will allow what I invented to find its color make A shape which neither water nor Sky do how do you now in this Contained shape go through Your life not like a constellation Not guessed at intuited or divined No name so how do you discern a shape for What is often called g-d • Vantablack was made for missiles Or planes for defense purposes so dark No eye could see it some voices are Like that no one could hear them it Is not good to be lost to be lost is More than metaphor for spiritual Condition I sit at the terrace overlooking The green sea perhaps it is failure That ought to be sought the voice That fails falls silent Sheila’s or The body’s the blue failed me the sun Fails every evening I we you have all Failed too everyone who strove all these Long years for peace failed • August 7 Predawn blue and blue the sound Of the sea further away and less violent lights On the water fishing boats closer than I Imagined no one is awake some animals Maybe what I do without knowing in a Harrowing world what I do without knowing As I listen to the gurgle of water against The promontory I feel like I am listening To a body how slow and opening a piece Of tune where one does not know how It will unfold no chord or cadence to tell You in sound what the path will be how It will happen until it happens I do not want To be alone what does it mean anyway when Someone says “Muslim” • Can she still feel music in her body can she Vocalize even without technology of the Mouth tongue palate glottis vocal chords What is a voice Anish Kapoor granted Exclusive right to work with blackest Black she now communicates through notes And gesture Vantablack made for Military purposes like sound also used For torture all sounds to wake you vibrate Your brain what emerges as an echo from Music as torture children on the beach Playing god is sound or art or science Shit and sex the body’s echo what mess Is left in the big or the little death • Sheila’s voice always in the background Always disappearing into the music Of what surrounds it the way one loses Oneself in sex or death or the moment Of shitting I got lost in Salman’s Music he said it was a surrender of Ego when he left me behind but really It was a surrender of my will words too Have god inside but for the prize of The body they do not compete can Not hold the storm of time cannot Hold the line do I touch the ocean Inside will my family come to My funeral • That night we swam the full moon Civilized us federated us gave us Our nationality we who were lost I have now lost what little heritage I did have returned to the rude Rough world long vowels of Morning evening birds scream No soft blanket falling to cover But a throttling a suffocation Of dusk no silence when the self Stills the absence of noise is itself Torture I cannot sleep tongued loose Drones move through a riff by A singer without papers • August 9 Eleanna takes me out on The water Miller exploding the form Of the novel itself I see now how Nin Wanted to move away from his vociferous Singing of the world as material to try To construct a music of the way The mind works still fed by light on the Water a mute noise of engines under Water as the boat passes the light House and heads out for open sea Remembering in Palestine crawling Down the hill trying to catch a wifi Signal from the settlement untapped Improvisation of space • At the stone terrace the gardener lingers Clipping hedges while I work breeze Between us soon I will return I read The article about a poet who was killed In the street his poems untranslated All the artists and writers killed the open Space of the sea yesterday Eleanna and I Went too far out went almost all the way To Marseille we saw the pink-gray sky Of wildfire I accepted the waves I found In the chapters of the Quran to sing my Way through turbulence draw a way Through the waves savage wildfire all The villages evacuated • We woke to the smell of burning air A little cool smell of charred refuse Colors muted last night the moon Came clear nearly blue eyes too Painfully large rough on the eyes and Impatient but I wanted to look so Badly for the meteors the sea Crashing against the rocks smoke From the fire obscured the sky In the morning we rowed across The harbor and realized fear of heights And fear of depth is the same just one You see and one you don’t