THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS AROUND US
The music
maps us
traces the contours
of our emotions
( an ordnance survey of
the mind )
the changing landscape of
who we are
who we thought
we would be
from our shallows
to our continental shelves
blue deepening into blue
music mapping that
which we could never see
( the "I"
becoming
"me" )
the exact co-ordinates
between the dream and
the reality:
mountain becoming scree
headland becoming cove
what's gone
what's not gone
so much
eroded love
how hope meanders
through time
an 0x-bow lake
of thought
cut off
from the who
we should
be
the final hand
of the delta's spread fan
the entering
into the sea
what's what
what's not
music maps us
the invisible cartography
being this
all too human man
singing himself
to his self
music maps
us in a song
"...oft in the stilly night. . ."
Singing and poems would emerge from everyday situations rather than "Now we are singing!" or "Here is a poem.!" but in the picking of spuds...the making a swing...constructing a shed or a bicycle...they would leak out and stain the world with their beauty. We are about to enter the world of black and white and just before the camera frrrreezing us forever in the pose....I am holding his hand...both of us dressed in best suits on our way to mass and he is humming OFT IN THE STILLY NIGHT tenderly under his breath....the thrum of his hum travelling down his body joining his hand to mine and the song finds its home in that hand clasp...this is my dad...my father who art my heaven...Danny be thy name...I hold on to him as if he were a prayer flung against the darkness of the darkest night that will ever be. His hand forever in my hand....the humming of the melody transferring its love from him to me.
Oft, in the Stilly Night
BY THOMAS MOORE
Oft, in the stilly night,
Ere slumber’s chain has bound me,
Fond memory brings the light
Of other days around me;
The smiles, the tears,
Of boyhood’s years,
The words of love then spoken;
The eyes that shone,
Now dimm’d and gone,
The cheerful hearts now broken!
Thus, in the stilly night,
Ere slumber’s chain hath bound me,
Sad memory brings the light
Of other days around me.
When I remember all
The friends, so link’d together,
I’ve seen around me fall,
Like leaves in wintry weather;
I feel like one
Who treads alone
Some banquet-hall deserted,
Whose lights are fled,
Whose garlands dead,
And all but he departed!
Thus, in the stilly night,
Ere slumber’s chain has bound me,
Sad memory brings the light
Of other days around me.