The world has not gone unnoticed.
She has shown herself to me, seductively,
A burlesque of sunrises and rains,
A flash of open highway, the kick and spin
Of caves beneath the ocean and deserted plains,
I have heard her ****** ballads and her sea-shanties
Have seen the plunge of her falcon
and the depth of the infinite sky
I am certain I caught a glimpse of her *******
And a wink of her mischievous eye.

She has shown me power and life, inescapable.
She has opened her arms to give me all.
And for my part, I drank it all, insatiable.
Left to right, and north to south
I took it all in, through my eyes
And through my mouth, and absorbed through my skin.

She has molted glorious hide for glorious hide
Moment by moment, for time immemorial
And I am but a baby nursing:
I am swollen to the point of bursting.

Something else was in the air
I was captivated by a marching band,
By the pungent smell of a metaphor,
And with a cigarette in my left hand
Finally I could not contain any more;
Either tripped up, or lifted on the radio buzz
I became a song--without physical form
Radiating, reverberating through the buildings
Or the trees, or wherever I was.

It comes down to this, this transformation:
It is a trick I learned from the masters, oh,
And the neophytes of each generation
In a place deep down below
That I hollowed out, swallowed, and took part by part
All the stories, all the music that had been played
As they were gathered
Here into the ear of my heart.

And I was made.

A song has a shape, but not a limitation
I could travel whole from room to room
Join with others in a convocation
Earth myself with a mighty boom
Gleam imperious, a holy crown
High as a satellite, or soft as cotton

I cannot be tied down
Nor forgotten
Not when I am a song.

There was a time, either before now, or later
I cannot recall;
When the world was wreathed in gloom.
Dark night came and conquered all.
For every joy, two curses came.
Misfortunes stagger against our weight
But redouble and resume
To quench our dull and sputtering flame.
The car won’t start, we missed the bus;
The bills, unpaid, grow beards.
No one comes to rescue us.

This house groaned, old and aware
That its days were not long.
It lay upon me like Atlas,
Foretold its collapse,
Crumbled and mumbled
As I grieved and retrieved all the scraps.

But when it grew too great
Even for my sturdy form to bear
I became a song--weightless,
Unbreakable, and carried along
By heaven knows what
Into heaven knows where.