Echo Space

The Castle Ruin at Saissac

 

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 scalesÑ

whole-tones leave

 

us dreamy again, as if there were a harp.

The charm of impossibilities. IÕm imagining

a piano; someoneÕs arm across the keys

 

or random notes, with the pedal down!

ThatÕs what the stars are like, held onto

above Black MountainÑthe 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.