I.
A Song of Spring Nights and Quiet KnivesAlnilam played a sugar maple cello
Hewn from the southern forests
It had a body the color of an apricot glazed and set awash in flame
It held gloss enough to bounce drops
Of light nectared into upper and upper balconies
The pegs were an ebony waveborne from imperious Sepulchre
Worn until smooth in soft sands
Cool to the touch and sweet to the strings, a sambuca nero
These strings Alnilam cured himself
First, a ram whose name he knew
Last, the gut sulfured and wound tight
Above the bottom there was a sun burnt into the maple
Rising to warm, its heart pierced by the endpin
Whose form was brass and dull
And strong and thin and smelted from a broken bell
Whose last note hummed there wrong and forever
Alnilam bore his cello
When he came from the unknown
To Hemlock and the constellation therein
He said to them I have come to understand
And they said to him play us your song
He sat upon the marble and said to them no song is mine
He said there are nights where every bar slides through my hands
Like water on the riverbed and water for the trees
And nights where I must
Wipe the blood from my fingertips
Like fire through the bedrock and the leaves
And each of these nights is a blessed pact
An oath I take between the aether and myself
To wait, to listen, to receive
To accept an impartation heretofore reserved
A song heretofore unplayed
Here, the Hemlock heard truth
But they had heard truth before:
That each song was an assemblage lunatic
Wrought from the pieces of an incomprehensible machine
Unearthed by puzzled archaeologists
Brought fruitless to museums and academies
And solved at last by whichever one man had dreamed
And forgot, and recalled
The full measure of this engine during every sleeping night
And so came many to dream, forget, and recall
But few knew the measure full when they awoke
They said to him then play for us a song of spring nights
And he said I will play a song of spring nights and quiet knives
Ahhhh, hmmm, ahh
And they listened amongst the earth marbled and sky falling
When his fingers stopped and his breath slowed
Alnilam listened to his echo and they mused
He sounded like--
Said One I see shadows on the walls
Said Four I hear gasping in the night
Said Five I feel hands upon my throat
Said Two I taste oil on the knives
Said Three I smell blood upon the floor
And they said bring him to the Watchman
Let him hear this song
And they brought him to the Watchman
They brought him for my last quartet
II. A Song of Shipwrecks in a Sea of Black
Azha played an upright bass given to her by her father
And she struck each string like cannons
On the cracking wall of a city under siege
She pulled it behind her like a child with a wagon
When she arrived at Hemlock, she walked the halls as on parade:
This is less bastion and more polished colonnade.
War comes soon and hear me, for I have much to say.
Savage and relentless she shot steel upon their frames
Til they quivered, til they shook, til they answered all same:
Bring her to the Watchman
Bring her for the last quartet
Or so they tried to bring her, but she’d rather she just went alone,
For what’s a journey with an escort?
(The romance of the invincible child soldier)
She walked from marble steps and open skies
To courtyards ringed with red in false concentrics
Where roses bloomed a fractured maze,
Where at a glance the way was gone forever,
Where at next it reappeared.
Her lips hummed against her heels’ clack
And she hmmed and clacked until the false maze’s end
Until red wooden doors bound with brass
Until she was the break between garden and the next
There was a silence that hummed against her through the brass
Silence wrought with woven threads of filament
Drawn from every sound that ever broke upon an ear
Yawning in perfect tension, an all empty sonic bastion
Full stop, imperative caesura
Goddess of boundaries and thresholds, give her leave
And she then stood within
And I asked her for her name
And she said Azha Eridani, the place of hatching, one of twenty-four
And I asked her the name of her instrument
And she asked why would she name a weapon
And I laughed
And she asked why was she here
And I asked if the silence frightened her
And she laughed
And she said that silence is an invitation
And a plea from an unconquered world
And that if the silence could suffocate the music
And if the music let itself be strangled
And it lay itself to die, then it was no song of hers
And I asked her to play for me a song of shipwrecks
And she said she would play a song of shipwrecks in a sea of black
Ahhhh, hmmm, ahh
She sounded like--
And I let the silence reach the door
I said that I saw the limbs scattered on the deck
The lighthouse with the empty brazier
The impossible dark and the silent captain
She looked through me and I looked at her
And I asked of her for the last quartet.
III. A Song of Iron Chains Lit Afire
Alioth found his violin in the wreckage of a tinker and his cart
There was a horse, shards of wagon
Metal scraps not yet repaired, yards of cloth, and mud
He told me he heard a string snap when he pulled the corpse
From beneath the axle
And sounded a F-sharp, the like of which he has tried to play himself
Suffusing tavern halls with fraternal twins and second cousins
Perhaps it was the string itself, I laughed to him
Sulfured from the gut of a virgin sacrifice?
Enchanted beneath the light of a full moon?
Pledged to spirits born when the world was etc?
He laughed with me
He said perhaps the wood is haunted
And a tinker’s ghost swallows up the tune?
Oh Alioth, would that you could have lived.
He roomed in the north-west, atop the tower
Slept before sundown, woke up in the dark
And practiced on the balcony until Hemlock’s walls let the sunlight in
He said he could not play within the twilight
So he played in its inversion to make up for time, sweet child
Every morning he waited with the dark for the sun to burn them away
On the day he found his lost F-sharp, the morning dark was full of thunder
He sat beneath the window, waited
Politely for the storm to say its peace
While it beat a one
two
onetwo one
two
He waited until the sun should long have come, but the stormclouds swallowed it
Gulped it down until they hung distended
And roiled like a swatted firefly writhing on the ground
He stood then at the window, pulled the glass
Palms upon sill, leaned his neck into the storm
And listened to the drums
The storm ricocheted a stochasm
Off the castle and the mountains and the hollows of the ground
One two one
o netwo one
And he heard it in the base of his neck until his spine rattled
And his eardrums tried to parse the message
Digging through the noise and failing every time onetwo
He began to pull himself back into the room
And failed every time
He was an insomniac so close to sleep one two one
Goddess, he had been awake so long, so long
In the bleaching sun there were no shadows
Where he could pluck the song one two
And he wept half between the tower and the storm
Every sob a prayer oh aether oh spirits born when the world was new
Let me sleep and dream and remember one two one
And he clutched his violin
And he crawled onto the balcony
And the rain beat upon his skull until all was percussion
one
The rhythm and the fury and the sublime concussion
two
There was the nothing within and the all without
one
And the thunder called to the lost F-Sharp
two
Come out come out come out come out come out
And the storm played a song of iron chains
And Alioth played a song of iron chains lit afire
Ahhhh, hmmm, ahh
He sounded like--
And upon the crenellations I saw the iron flare orange
I felt the drumming on my skin
I heard the cracks in the machine
I heard and said come, Alioth
Come home for the last quartet.
IV. A Song of Single Malts and Periastric Epochs
We have not mastered the dance of flight
And so a dancer needs her ground
She is the nexus of movement
The weave of disparate vectors into one form
Every tendon to every muscle is the art
But the dancer needs the tension
A rock against which her ocean can break
She can ache her frame until precision incarnate
But upon a wood too smooth, she slides
Upon soil too soft, she sinks
Upon stone too uneven, she stumbles
She finds her ground and moves upon it ever
And as the song plays, the dance will stop itself at never
Day unto day unto day until the dance is more rest to her than sleep
More drink to her than wine, more joy to her than love
Alhena played the viola like a dancer plays the floor
When I brought her to lead the last quartet
She played me a song of ashes burned from saints
When I asked her to play me a song of ashes
She sounded like a--
Ahhhh, hmmm, ahh
I offered her a whiskey, and she said
After the last sonata
Before it was time (it could have been time ever
But it was time only once, and again never)
She came to me and said they are not ready
I said to her how, not ready?
They are discordant
Their task is flight, but yours is concord
They have flight, but
Each to a different current, and each against the next
How can the falcon be falconer?
Be perfect
I am perfect
Be more perfect
They need sleep
Burn through sleep
I have come as close as they will allow
You have not come the closest they can take
I must--
Burn them
How can I--
Burn them?
I do not lead the quartet.
Whiskey?
After.
Then I shall leave it sealed
She returned to the constellation and she did not play
I heard the tunneled silence of the lost viola and I did not sleep
Day unto day unto day
There was no dance, and her heart cracked and clove
For three days she gathered chains and locks and wept
On the fourth day she held practice in the auditorium
And sealed the quartet inside
The inside of prison walls are scarred and stained
Nail, bone, rock, iron, blood, blood, blood, blood
And every man that comes forth comes forth alone
The inside of crucibles are clean
But the clay has broke and burned and fused the once inviolate
And it remembers the fire forever
When next you look up on clear nights
Hark for the gleaming, and remember they are crucibles
Thrumming, perfect, furious, defiant, dying with every flare
Burning their own hearts to death so that
For a hundred trillion instants in the face of infinity
They are light
When they left the constellation they were broken, burned, and fused
Alhena came to me and told me there was concord
And I think now that she saw me for who I was
She asked if the beauty was worth the cost
I said in the cost is the beauty
I offered her a whiskey
And she said after.
And I left it sealed
There are days I think to taste it
That single malt, older by the day
But we are measured by the treatment of our dead
V. A Song of Stars
Theirs was a symphony of four, four, and one
And they sounded like the calling of the rising sun
Like an artillery’s last cannonade
Like the ghost of lightnings gone
Like catharsis on the ballet floor
They sounded like the chime of a supernova against the held breath of empty space
After, in my travels, I came across a man who played the violone
He sat beneath a lamp that overhung the gateroad, just before the elms within the fog
He said he knew a song that was sung at the birth of our universe
A song played by the constellations before men had instruments to pluck
I bade him play, I listened, I remembered every note
I saw that he knew the assembly lunatic, and I smiled
And I buried him beneath the elms within the fog
It strikes me now and again as curious,
That the canvas should resist.
