i heard elvis costello singing ‘alison’
today
steel guitar and a mandolin
behind him on the stage,
his voice finally finely crumpled
by the million collisions of encroaching
old age.
he leaned back from the mic
to sing ‘the bartender turns the
juke box
way
down
low’
and his voice filled the room
with the strength of his convictions
instead of the strength of microphones.
all the amplifiers in the world
can’t bring a mouth that close to an ear.
all the powers of this electrified world
can’t bring my fingers any closer to you
than when they brush the strings
of this guitar.
i wanted to sing
straight into your heart
but i let the machinery keep up apart,
conquered by fear that my faltering voice
wasn’t power enough.
‘i know this world is killing you,’ he
sang,
‘but my aim is true.’
i turn off the lights, unplug the sky,
recede to human size, and
say for once what i mean
which is simply
‘i love you.’
that’s my only song.
I’m sometimes confused,
words come out wrong
and my fingers are stupid—
they grope for chords
i’ve known since childhood:
i lose sight of the truth of a minor and
c,
i lose sight of love
and find complexity—and with it always
soft sorrow and tension,
high harmonic
structures,
upper dimensions,
paths curved in time,
time curved in possibility.
my life takes the form
of a series of lines intersecting connecting
the silk of the sky
to the dust of the coal mines;
the smiles of lovers
to the handlesof coffins;
the math of the seasons
to the men taking off
in their amplified
rockets
bound for the heavens
and lost to the earth,
humming songs from childhood
to shield their human ears
from the thunder of
engines
those machines that compel us
to rise from our beds
pay homage to power
and leave all that matters for darkness,
vacuum,
pinpricks of starlight perfected.
they hang there, weightless, these lost
men,
observing the empty heart of the sky
while all they love--
the smoky rooms
the steel guitars
the fragile courage of the human voice
the futile optimism of the always-open
ear--
all these wonders spin away beneath them.
they hum to themselves their childish
tunes,
prayers unheard beneath the roar
of engines firing, turning them finally earthward.
‘my aim is true,’ elvis was singing; ‘my aim is
true.’
when i come down and the roaring stops,
i will touch this silent soil
strum that long-lost simple chord
place my lips close beside your perfect,
optimistic,
ever-forgiving ear, and say
‘i love you.’
‘i know,’ you will answer.
‘that’s why you fly.
and that’s why you return.
i know.’
