You sing an arpeggio, a seventh chord,
and it hangs there a long time.
Here is the beauty of the human face.
Almost any room is a cathedral.
No one around, not even guards
in the twelve centuries of rubble.
So many strands converge;
you sing pentatonic scales�
whole-tones leave
us dreamy again, as if there were a harp.
The charm of impossibilities. I�m imagining
a piano; someone�s arm across the keys
or random notes, with the pedal down!
That�s what the stars are like, held onto
above Black Mountain�the Montagne Noire.
And when you laugh, there it is,
the full strange chord of your laughter
unmistakable, a true thing,
its own force in the vaulted room,
long after you stop your song,
long after you close your eyes.