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Anne Scott Musil
so many hearts singe
with my feelings
so many streets flats nations
bistros prairies hold my
frenzies hopes
here fields and bungalows
and dogs on chains
but there's one sky & sun one
subtle puppetry
I'd like my words to enter
prairie rooms ship holds
to murmur some ecstatic
forest vision
find kin in prisoners
in solitude crowds each with
his flame
All my life
I have been half deaf.
In my room
I steam rice, make tea,
dress myself
to meet people.
I make them tell me
their names twice,
then help them as I can.
Though I play no lute,
I hope they will feel
as though hearing one
lilt among trees.
As I went through the marshes
a doe sprang out of the corn
and flashed up the hill-side
leaving her fawn.
On the sky-line
she moved round to watch,
she pricked a fine black blotch
on the sky.
I looked at her
and felt her watching;
I became a strange being.
Still, I had my right to be there with her,
Her nimble shadow trotting
along the sky-line, she
put back her fine, level-balanced head.
And I knew her.
I AM a copper wire slung in the air,
Slim against the sun I make not even a clear line of
shadow.
Night and day I keep singing — humming and thrumming:
It is love and war and money ; it is the fighting and the
tears, the work and want,
Death and laughter of men and women passing through
me, carrier of your speech,
In the rain and the wet dripping, in the dawn and the
shine drying,
A copper wire.