Songbird

               The wanderer walked a winding way, whistling into a flute of reeds. A springtime sun shone kindly on the green fields and roving streams while overhead white clouds formed vistas of fleeting timelessness. Intermittently he piped happy or mournful tunes. Somehow he felt he borrowed them from simplicity, from an innocent part of himself he thought he’d forgotten, a more honest, a truer self. In dreams he feared he’d lost that self, that it was and would be for him always only a memory, a refuge he’d never find again.

                Bu in the sunlight, with the flowers and the green good earth, perhaps it was hope that set him piping tunes.

                Yesterday, or was it years ago, a songbird had appeared to him, asked, “You strange creature, why do you pipe your songs?”

                He had smiled shyly at the bird, which was blue and marked with white and black, “I don’t know, little bird. Why do you sing your songs?”

                “Because,” the bird answered proudly, “I have a beak. I must sing when I’m happy and when I’m sad. It would be against my nature not to sing.”

                “Perhaps we’re not so different, beautiful bird!” laughed the piper. They had spent the rest of the day together, the bird fluttering from tree to tree and singing to the man below, who piped harmonies up to her in return. When night fell, the man slept in the shadow of a fruit tree while the songbird dozed in the branches above.

                “My dreams troubled me last night,” he’d told the bird upon waking, the grass shining with dew.

                “What did you dream?”

                “I can’t remember,” he confessed, “All I know is that I was taken by a great terror and felt such cold as if there would never be warmth or tenderness again.”

                The bird alighted on his shoulder and sang a comforting tune in reply. They went along together, and soon enough the terror of the bad dream was forgotten.

                Around midday they ate together, feasting on berries and a loaf of bread the piper carried in his sack. Together the man and the songbird laughed and sang, and the grass, led by the wind, seemed to dance to the sound of their music.

                With a terrible cry and a flash of shining talons, a great eagle appeared, taking in and devouring the tiny bird. She had not even the time to cry out.

                “Oh, you terrible eagle!” the piper shouted with such pain in his voice as if the predator had rent his own flesh, “How could you do this? How could you eat my helpless friend?”

                High above, the great bird circled about to land in a nearby tree. Its eyes were hard, but not harsh, its beak cruel, but not unfeeling. The eagle sat, perched silently for a time.

                “Man, do you hate me for what I've done?” he asked in a voice ancient as the roots of the hills.

                “Yes, I hate you, you horrible eagle. I, I’ll kill you for what you've done! I’ll climb that tree and kill you myself!” the piper cried, grasping at the tree’s lower branches.

                “You will not bring back the songbird that way.”

                “I don’t care,” the piper answered as wet tears ran down his face, “You’re an evil creature and you’ve got to be destroyed!”

                “So you say, because I’ve eaten your friend,” spoke the eagle. His eyes softened as he asked, “But man, was the songbird evil because she ate grains and little berries?”

                The piper looked with terror into the eagle’s eyes, and his limbs shook as he climbed, “No, of course not. But you’re not like her, you’re a monster!”

                “I must eat if I’m going to live,” the eagle answered, “I have a stomach. It would be against my nature not to eat.”

                The man wept bitterly to hear this, sat on a branch and beat his fists furiously against the trunk, “But I don’t want to accept that. I want to call you evil and hate you.”

                “Even if it means blinding yourself to the truth?”

                The piper sat, weeping quietly among the limbs and leaves.

                The eagle took flight with a few words of departure, “Man, it did not start with me, and it will not end with me. I will remember your friend.”

                The wanderer remained in the tree for a time, mourning for the lost songbird and pondering the eagle’s words. The eagle spoke truly, he thought, but how ever to accept it. How to live and love and feel deeply the beauty of the world when all about there reigned this terrible wrongness? How to live with pain and loss and still have the courage to feel? How to… how to?

                Today, walking along with his pipe, the memory brought a tear to his eye. But in the sunlight, with the flowers and the green good earth, perhaps it was hope that set him piping tunes.

Burlesque Impériale

"France. L'armée. Tête de l'armée. Joséphine."
-Napoleon Bonaparte, dying words

And when the sun has set on empire,
the bubble blown and burst,
the rising tide surrendered,
and all your best turned worst...

What is left of glory
when time's grains have run?
What to make of memory
of the echo of the gun?

Beneath the flood of foaming death
you'll meet your maker soon,
proud emperor who with a breath
would leap the fullest moon.

She dances, oh she dances, with her eyes
so deep, so dark.
She is dressed in foamy moonlight
and makes desire spark.
Her garments know no slip of time,
but breathe tension and release.
She dances for the emperor;
when will her dancing cease?

With bangled arms upraised
and a deepness in her stare,
she dances, oh proud Salome!
with the ocean for her hair.

And you would claim dominion
over every little breath,
you ruler, emperor, conqueror,
who commiserates with death.

You who sleep with open eyes
and a hand upon the sword.

Her smile and her laugh,
you think to claim these too?
Still she unwinds her dance
and bares herself to you.

Why did you march to Austria
to make small the Viennese?
And why leave home for Jena
to bring the Germans to their knees?

What is your secret, emperor,
why this thirst for endless war?
What did the Enigma whisper,
whispers yet through every door?

Oh, how she watches, emperor!
How she sees you view her dance!
How you melt beneath the power
of your own reflected glance!
She has slipped her seventh veil
and she stands with painted toes;
but I wonder, is it Salome
who truly has no clothes?

For you offer all the world
to she who your gaze entranced.
And you saw only Salome
when your armies proud advanced,
for you were conquered, conqueror,
by a woman with a dance.

Beneath the flood of foaming death
you'll meet your maker soon,
proud emperor who with a breath
would leap the fullest moon.

For you were conquered, conqueror,
by a woman with a dance.

Dying to Know

                In one way or another, it is inevitable that one day we will be forced to seriously contemplate our own demise. Death looms out there, hazy at the edge of our vision, yet there is no honest way to pretend that it is not an ever-present border, a great question mark that gives a certain tone to our living. It is really no more unhealthily morbid to meditate deeply on death than it is to think of birth, or work, or friendship, or any of the other features all our lives share in common. If we want to live consciously, honestly, or authentically, then is it not necessary for us to at least live in the full awareness that life is going to end? After all, life may be nothing more than a game, but if it’s a game don’t we at least want to keep the rules in mind?

                What are we afraid of when we vigorously deny that we fear the death we spend so much of our waking lives trying to distract ourselves from? Is there really some great shame in admitting that we’re afraid that it will hurt, that we’re afraid of ceasing to be, that we’re afraid that after our small funeral no one will really miss us? Why does the very attempt to look seriously into the question of death conjure up images of discontented suburban high school students complaining that no one understands them?

                Why does death lead only to questions?

                There are a number of ways that we characteristically deal with the problem of our imminent catastrophe. How often do we bury ourselves in the routines of work, groping after blissful unawareness by continually sharpening ourselves in one direction? We distract ourselves by travel of all kinds, seeking diversion and amusement by seeing the world, by developing no end of casual acquaintances, by clicking hopeful-looking links to obscure websites we never plan to visit again. We sweep our end under a rug, and because we always stand on the brink of some new and diverting experience we never have to think of the worms that will crawl through our decaying bodies in the end.

                So long as we keep busy, we think without thinking, we can escape the inevitable thought of the inevitable.

                But I ask you this: many years from now, when you lie in you hospital bed, knowing that you will never get up again, will you be glad that you hid this quite foreseeable outcome from yourself? Will you be happy that you didn't live your life in the harrowing light of the blinding realization that you are going to die? Or will you regret that you never really took your life as your own life, never accepted the incredible responsibility of living a life you could look at and say, “This life justifies itself. Even if this life were the sum of all things that have been or ever will be, it would have been well worth the living.”

                After all, one of the great absurdities that hides behind our superstitious non-acknowledgment of death is the fact that so many of us are unhappy. If this life were one long pleasure cruise, perhaps it would make sense that we would like to remain as ignorant of death as possible. But even the easiest life is hard, and we inevitably find that life is so structured that the very things that make life worth living border on the impossible, seem almost miraculous. We find ourselves always faced with a choice between two courses, one of which is easy but will secretly fuel our self-loathing, and one of which is hard but will perhaps someday make us into the kind of person we could freely love and respect. It is almost always easier not to consider our own death.

                Perhaps we avoid the subject of death less out of any real fear of it (for who can truly fear the absolutely incomprehensible?) than from a nagging awareness of what a deep consideration of death would entail. Would we live the way we do if we let ourselves come to grips with the fact of our own death? There is nothing morbid in coming to an understanding of death. To live in the knowledge of our own death and finitude does not at all diminish the value of life, but rather increases it, opens us up to the real infinities within and around us. When we truly accept that this life is finite, it’s value, the value of each precious moment, becomes infinite.

                We are fettered by the ridiculous thought that though dying comes to us as surely as breathing, we wonder whether it’s just possible that we could be spared. Technology could advance, and we could live forever in machine bodies, building tedium upon tedium till the stars themselves grow old. Or maybe death is something like a disease, and we’ll find the cure to it, live agelessly always, young and ever beautiful.

                But these are dreams. Time rushes on always, ever faster and faster it streams towards apocalypse. The torrent has us in its unshakable grip. We have only to accept it and learn to swim.

Desire and Hydras

                From childhood onward, we are all deeply acquainted with the problems of unsatisfied desire. Though we do not remember it, surely as infants we were all hungry and could not feed ourselves, cold and unable to warm ourselves, lost and afraid without the means to comfort ourselves. As we grow older, our desires become more complex, more various, more particular and less universal. Yet the basic problem remains always and ever the same. We find ourselves wanting what we cannot have, or at least what we cannot provide for ourselves. Constantly bombarded by desires too great, too small, too confused ever to be fully satisfied, we start to doubt that we really want what we think we want.

                But we humans are nothing if not clever creatures. We decide that we want to do something, to conquer the world, say, or put a man on the moon. We know we might not really want these things, but we also know that a life without a goal is the most terrifying of all possibilities. So we strategize, become subtle, we grow ever more and infinitely clever. We find happiness in our action with a purpose. And yet…

                Some doubt grows in our minds, a fear that all this subtle planning amounts to nothing more than a recipe to disappoint ourselves all the more. We've lived long enough to know that no desire, however great, can endure too much satisfaction. How many of us have had some favorite cereal that we ate every day for a month, only to wake one morning to find that the slightest taste of it sours our stomach? What changed, we wonder. What indeed.

                Desire is a hydra, a beast that grows two hungry mouths for every head we cut off, yet disappears unaccountably as soon as it has eaten. How to fight such a monster? Is it enough for us to drive it from one spot to another, keep it running from goal to goal, deferred pleasure to deferred pleasure? Is it even, if you’ll pardon the word… desirable? Or does this approach only lift us up to drop us all the further, to crush us all the better?

                There’s nothing surprising, I suppose, in the fact that all of the world’s great spiritual traditions have offered their own remedies to the problems of desire. Though I could go on endlessly about all the various prescriptions these traditions offer, today I’ll limit myself to two of them, Buddhism and Christianity, for two reasons. The first reason is that I have had a more sustained interest and engagement with these two traditions than with the others. The second is that the remedies these two offer seem to me so fundamentally opposed.

                The Buddha tells us that the problem of life is suffering, and that the cure for suffering is to put an end to desire. Convince the hydra that it is only hungry because it has become attached to the pleasure of eating, and the beast will stop eating. Once it has stopped, it will soon starve, leaving us peacefully non-attached.

                Good and well, says Christianity, but your goal is all wrong. For the Christian, it seems that Buddhism has hit on precisely the wrong problem. Suffering comes from desire, certainly, but what if there were a way to direct that desire fruitfully, to turn suffering and desire toward a greater good? The Christian does not view suffering as an overwhelming problem, is fairly well-disposed towards pain, may even enjoy it a little bit. The Christian is out to find comfort and solace in suffering, not an escape from it. So the Christian answer to the problem of suffering is quite different: rather than an end to desire, Christianity seeks to cultivate an infinite desire infinitely deferred. Thus is born the image of life as a long pilgrimage towards God, and the promise of the Kingdom of Heaven in the hereafter. If we can tame the hydra, says the Christian, we can ride on its back into an infinite horizon.

                I must say, I have no clear idea what people mean when they call themselves Christian Buddhists or Buddhist Christians. To my ears, that sounds almost as if they told me they wanted to see the bottom of the ocean from the peak of Mount Everest. Both are wonderful destinations, of course, but hardly fit to be combined.

                Here in America, I think we tend even now to lean towards the Christian view of things. Would our advertisements work quite so well if they weren't directed at a society that had become accustomed to centuries of the sort of vigorously Puritan self-denial that allowed it to span a continent? Isn’t there a secret underside to our consumer society, where it runs less from our real desire to consume than from the guilt and shame we love to feel at the thought of our being mere consumers? Ever noted the odd mix of shame and pleasure in your friend’s voice as they told you about their recent Netflix binge? And what’s really going on when someone “ironically” listens to pop music?

                Have we Americans found a new answer to the problem of desire: the infinitely deferred desire to defer an infinite desire infinitely?

Audrey

Oh, how we love you, Audrey, though you've long gone to your rest;
we watch the bright stars shining and see you, the very best.
Though now your image dances only through dark's borrowed light,
somehow we hope, dear Audrey, that you'll hear these words we write.

Your mother would have acted, were it not (to her distress)
that she had to play the role of the worldly Baroness.
Your father, banker Ruston, who never a bank was at,
put on the name of Hepburn to play at aristocrat.

And you were born in Holland in a decade after war.
You grew in quiet Arnhem and in England off the shore.
Audrey, as a tiny child you so dearly loved the dance,
and your balletic mother so encouraged your advance.

But as you grew, you dancer, violent echoes shook the land,
and into peaceful Holland mother led you by the hand.
She hoped that there in Arnhem you could weather the day's rage,
but soon this place of refuge would become a fearful cage.

For to your door in Arnhem all the German armies came;
from fear of seeming English, you took Edda as your name.
You, sympathetic Edda, saw your neighbors sent to camps,
and in the wartime famine suffered undernourished cramps.

Oh, that you should have suffered so, that you were crushed by pain!
Oh, that your bright eyes darkened to see bodies of the slain!
But you were made of sturdy stuff, though shaken to the roots,
saw peace return to Arnhem under English parachutes.

Now Audrey, though unbroken, something quivered at your core,
a ling'ring thinness in the blood, and memories of war.
You'd never be a dancer, and it lacerates your soul:
"Too tall and far too sickly to take on the prima role."

Though hurt, dismayed, with purpose clear you made a change of scene,
by action saw your image now projected on the screen.
And you were Europe's answer to the California girl;
you would have been a dancer but you hypnotized the world.

Far off from wartime Holland, where the bombs burst very loud,
you wrapped yourself in innocence to soothe a weary crowd.
Though you were never simple, though you knew quite well the score,
knew there's courage in bright smiles in a decade after war.

Capote made a fuss when you played his Ms. Golightly,
and we must ask you, Truman, just what you found unsightly?
You won our hearts, you callgirl with a writer at her door;
is Truman simply miffed you said, "I'll never play a whore?"

Who were you, Audrey Hepburn, and why did you quit the game?
Why toss away all Hollywood upon the peak of fame?
Though other women sold their lives and lost their ownmost souls,
you sailed when the tide was high, and pursued far different goals.

Oh, how we miss you, Audrey, now you've long gone to your rest;
we watch the bright stars shining and see you, the very best.
Though now your image dances only through dark's borrowed light,
oh, how we pray, dear Audrey, that these words will reach your sight!

Musical Living

                Now and again, life appears fragmented, incoherent, and intolerably strange. We spend an enormous chunk of our brief existence here trying to thread moments together, to find the hidden fiber that will bind the fragile bead work we've made of our situations. We hunt for deep structures in our lives, patterns that go beyond the everyday, we strive to find signs that we are part of some higher order, something we can point to and shout, “Yes! That’s it!” Most of the time, we are alienated from ourselves, and part of this alienation is the smug certainty that “I” (whoever that may be) am the only one who feels alienated.

                There are, of course, at least as many ways of attempting to cope with or overcome this alienation as there are human beings. One of the most common means of coping with our human isolation is the way of refusing to acknowledge it, refraining from looking into it, denying it when the subject arises. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this method, and it works, as far as it goes. And yet sometimes I wonder why one of the most common nightmares we human beings have is one of running headlong away from some faceless menace, a featureless monster too fearful to be looked at.

                But I’m not here today to talk about all the means of dealing with alienation; I’m here to talk about music. Music, in its own way, is just as universally human as eating, sleeping, or feeling like you woke up someday from a vague someplace and found yourself in a slightly hostile land peopled by folk you can’t quite comprehend. Music is what sound was made for. Music lifts us out of the vicious circles of our thoughts and attunes us to something we lost sight of when we were going about our lives. Something like memory always clings to a beautiful piece of music, where we feel like it was discovered, or rediscovered, rather than made. And in a way this is the literal truth, since every singer rediscovers, revivifies the song each time they sing it.

                Music celebrates, exults in, exists in, precisely those aspects of time that give us the most anxiety in our own lives. Without time, there could be no music, because no single note could ever be a melody. Taken as a random collection of isolated tones, music would be entirely incomprehensible to us. Another way of saying this is that music exists entirely as a movement, that the individual notes take on meaning for us because of the way they are arranged in time. Music has no fear of time, for time is its native element, its necessary support.

                Though music depends on time for its existence, it is just as important to note that music loses itself in time. By the time the note reaches our ears, the performer has already lost it forever. Music frees us briefly from the confines of time, but only because it gives freely of itself, does not seek to preserve itself. The only purpose of music (if we may speak of something so great in terms of purpose) is to move us, to delight us, to lift us momentarily from the prison of our aloneness. What higher goal could there be?

                Music represents, I believe, the very best possibilities of the human spirit. It points us toward a way of living that allows us to accept the stupidities of life without judgment and without bitterness. It reminds us that every person we meet is a world in themselves, a world whose particulars we may never know but who thinks and feels and hurts and hopes just as deeply as we do. It teaches us to be humble, recognizing that we are, after all, simple beings who get a kick out of listening to complicated sounds.

                Personally, I try to think of my life as a piece of music, one with its discords and counterpoints, its major and minor chords. I try to think of the dreary routine of everyday life as a necessary supporting rhythm that will build into something more satisfying in time. I try to think of the people I encounter as voices in a great harmony my ears just aren't big enough to pick out. I try to think, I hope to think, that some higher necessity threads its way through the notes of my days, guiding the melody of my life to some kind of resolution.  And though it may be a sign of childish naiveté or gross self-deception, I try to assure myself that I’m not the only one who feels this terrific sense of fragmentation.

Spring Nostalgia

                For all my life, spring has been my chosen season. The numbness of winter gradually fades from our fingers, and we are overcome by a new energy, a new zeal for life that we forgot in the cold months. Songbirds return and the land becomes green. We remember, with an aching nostalgia that pains us to our bones, the great task of living, the enormous adventure of making life an adventure. How did we forget something so simple? How did the winter so ensnare us, so benumb us to the joy of every breath, that we forgot even that warmth, that light, that green and newness were possible? The April air makes us simple again, joyful again, courageous again; but even April air brings its own tender pain.

                We feel already, listening to the happy sprinkling spring showers, a distant echo of next year’s winter. By June we have forgotten about cold, but in April we feel the last icicles melting in our veins. I wonder if we feel nostalgic in the spring because there is still enough of ice in us that we can truly, deeply feel the flood of time flowing past. The birds sing, the grass grows green and strong, spring flowers light upon trees, shoots, and bushes. New life and youth shine all around us. Perhaps for the first time in his life, a boy of twenty-three can look about himself and truly feel himself young, a boy who at ten was called an eighty-year-old man.

                Spring is the time of youth, the season of new projects, new thoughts, new beginnings. Yet spring is also the time of the sweet tender ache, the time when we recall that each budding bloom will wither by next fall. We who feel ourselves young again know that ache, that lovely, urgent, beautiful ache, that overwhelming desire to taste the whole of life, to embrace life, to live! Even in our headlong rush toward new horizons, new situations, new and ever more demanding challenges, we feel the chilly breath of winter and death. This is the nostalgia of spring and youth, the sweet pain of the certainty that youth is fleeting, the liberating responsibility of ensuring that youth must not be wasted.

                There is no paradox in saying that youth already knows its own kind of nostalgia. What, after all, is nostalgia? Is it not the keen awareness of the frailty of our grasp, a profound realization of our ultimate powerlessness against time? Life, for each of us, encounters us as a well of possibility, and our moments of nostalgia are those when we feel in our hearts, viscerally, that the well is drying up. What a horror! With each moment that slips our grasp we lose one instant of possibility, we’ve converted that much open futurity into fixed past. Why should we have to be old to know nostalgia? We can already feel a nostalgia for the present moment, which has turned to memory by the time we notice it.

                There exists a way of thinking that would have us believe that because time is, in an ultimate sense, out of our hands, the best policy is to lie low and let life’s storm pass. Best not to become too attached to a life you will inevitably be deprived of, says this attitude. Do not seek too much, do not attempt too much, do not set your sights too high, they say. This is the life-strategy of “Don’t rock the boat.” Be glad, be thankful for home, for work, home, health, friends, family, and a quiet life. Do not tempt the gods by striving for the infinite.

                There is much to be said for this way of thinking; among these things is the fact that such a life is utterly unnatural.

                Every one of us was conceived in the spring tide, one of millions of pilgrims swimming for the invisible shore that would become our other half. None of us remembers this struggle. Our first step in life was no step at all, but a swim. In that primordial swim you, yes you, reader, beat out millions upon millions of your fellows, striving without promises, without assurances, for the bare right to exist. You did not doubt then that this life, this precious chance at life, was worth every effort, every cleverness, every iota of energy. Why do you doubt it now?

                It’s no good to say, “I don’t know if life is worthwhile. I didn’t ask to be here.” You did more than ask, reader. Do not dare insult your former self, the millions of possible selves you took the place of, by giving up when the road seems hard.

                Spring has arrived, and we are giddy with the energy of the season. If we wouldn’t be ashamed of ourselves when we close our eyes the last time, we must dare to set goals that seem impossible. We must take the first step of the proverbial journey of a thousand miles. We must stop trying to shield ourselves from the world, stop trying to live like abstract beings, and above all we must accept and revel in the fact that we are physical beings with physical bodies. Fear is no excuse for inaction. Prudence is no guarantee of safety. We are each living under a death sentence, and the blow may come at any moment. There is no such thing as a safe place. There is no reason not to be on the move.

To an Exile

It isn't that I love you,
since I'd have to love myself.
It isn't that I hate you,
or even hate myself.

But when I think of your probing eyes,
your curious eyes,
your pointed eyes,
and the caramel of your voice (that voice!)
one autumn day at the coffee shop...
When I remember that, well,
I wonder what I feel.

And when we talked of homelands lost,
and distances of memory,
and things to come...
We talked,
and I wondered (I wonder!)
what was behind those eyes.

You didn't order anything at the coffee shop.
I wonder if I ordered too soon.

We met at the store, do you remember?
My hands were full of toaster pastries,
and you asked us to breakfast the next day.
We went.
And for some years
I didn't see much of you.

"All roads lead to Rome," you told me,
once in the Student Center.
You laid yourself across the seats,
because, as you said,
this is America.
And as I sat reading a book on Babel,
I asked you where Rome was.

I didn't think much of it at the time,
although I was pleased you remembered
my name.

Sometimes I wonder what you think of me,
and it makes me hope you don't.

You didn't order anything at the coffee shop.
I wonder if I ordered too soon.

And on a whim I poured out my story,
the story of exile,
the story we shared.
I shared my lost home to the south,
the Spanish moss, steaming palms,
and cool waters.
I shared years in a strange land,
and sleeping far from home.
I knew we shared that scar.

Why did I do that?
Contrary to appearances,
I don't reveal myself often.

You didn't order anything at the coffee shop.
I wonder if I ordered too soon.

A Fox Hunt

Do you remember that summer,
that summer we met?
We were young together, so young.
All was still at the centre,
the hub of all motion,
and around us all things wheeled.

You sang to the cello's strain,
there in the dark under earth.
(Was it fate?)
Did you sense the tender seed you planted,
in me to germinate?

The blackbird soars to the azure-hued height
while the red fox sniffs at the dirt.
But if that sly fox plays her cards just right
she'll eat that dumb bird for dessert.

We sat under that tree,
we all sat by the tree with the rocks.
We spoke of cannibals
and marbled meats.
You turned to me once, spoke kindly,
but your eyes were hungry.
And I was afraid.

Your hair was short, your clothes were dark,
your eyes were tongues of flame.
I was a timid boy.
Did you relish how you frightened me?
We were young together (so young!),
and around us all things wheeled.

The blackbird soars to the azure-hued height
while the red fox sniffs at the dirt.
But if that sly fox plays her cards just right
she'll eat that dumb bird for dessert.

Do you remember that autumn,
years later, years past,
in a new town, but we
just the same?
Strayed far from the centre,
the hub of all motion,
yet around us all things wheeled.

You were older and I was older,
but still we could call ourselves young.
We drank, with friends,
and toasted to memory.
But though your thirst was quenched,
I knew what was in your eyes.

The blackbird soars to the azure-hued height
while the red fox sniffs at the dirt.
But if that sly fox plays her cards just right
she'll eat that dumb bird for dessert.

And on the balcony we met the cold night,
and drew close.
"My head is on your lap," you said,
and it was.

And when we kissed, I did not hold back.
(For once)
Your lips were the earth,
your eyes distant suns.
I was lost in your space,
and around us all things wheeled.

The blackbird soars to the azure-hued height
while the red fox sniffs at the dirt.
But if that sly fox plays her cards just right
she'll eat that dumb bird for dessert.

Do you remember that night,
the night when I learned
the secret you still might not know?
You turned off the lights,
and it was dark.
Drawn near to the centre,
the hub of all motion,
here around us all things wheeled.

I kissed your lips
and your mouth.
You drew me in,
led by the hand.
How characteristic of you.

The blackbird soars to the azure-hued height
while the red fox sniffs at the dirt.
But if that sly fox plays her cards just right
she'll eat that dumb bird for dessert.

I wonder where the warrior went,
and the glory of ages past,
swords and the taste of blood.
Where will you find it, conqueror?
Would you weep like Alexander?
Would you taste that sweet revenge?
Would you be great?
Would you like to hear a secret?

A force of nature
cannot be contained.
The drift of history
tends towards its centre.
Would you like to hear a secret?
Around it, all things wheel.

The blackbird soars to the azure-hued height
while the red fox sniffs at the dirt.
But if that sly fox plays her cards just right
she'll eat that dumb bird for dessert.

Caw!

Caw!

Caw!