Angel Rain

Do you remember Hemingway’s sad heroine

who was afraid of the rain she said

she saw herself dying in it and didn’t

Mozart and think of poor Chopin

in love on Mallorca feeling the storm bubble

like an icy ocean at the bottom

of a well in his shivering lungs.

It’s only earth that loves rain that sucks

it like an angel’s kiss into its greedy, dirty

mouth. It’s only earth that teaches us

to listen for the almost invisible sigh of feathers

against the air, of wings shaking off water

like fear. It’s only when clouds

hide their hearts from the sun that angels

dare to remember how sweet it was to be a bitter

animal astonished by their sudden grace.

Evolution is Arrogant. Human Nature is Cruel.

The Discovery of Music as We

know it - not just a song or a chorus, but all

the complicated instruments, the conscious

language of the orchestra -

must have started to happen - what? -

only seven or eight hundred

years ago. And until then, a whole

class of people would have existed,

for hundreds of generations,

who were musicians but could only practice

by imagining silence:

Composers whose material was a certain

unameable lack in their lives.

Think of Rimski-Korsakov’s great, great

great grandfather, a dozen

times removed, wondering

if he might be insane, getting disturbed

because the compulsive chants

and dances of his muddy village

made him gnash his teeth

and pucker his lips,

to keep himself from

mouthing those unspeakable,

alien, angel tongue noises

that attacked him even at his

workbench at noon, while all

the other blacksmiths just

grunted and hammered their

horseshoes and nursed their vague,

shamefully private dreams of flying.