The sound of God
Under whispers of 3 am poets
too lazy to get out of bed
and fetch pen & paper
in the middle of the night,
under disbelieving stares
of street life chroniclers overhearing
wild conversations - "where do you
get your strength from? prayers?"
(two teenage kids on the train,
urban sages in search of
their third buddy and the child)
under endless jingles of TV game shows,
meaningless red 24/7 news tickers,
and late afternoon sitcoms
of plastic reality,
under couch potatoes shivering
in a stranger's dream, breathlessly
waiting in front of the screen
to see something that really
concerns them (and them alone),
under death & fame news
announced on tv & broadcast via
radio before the national anthem
concludes one day and begins
another at midnight sharp,
under desperate screams of real pain
and near-Armageddon prayers
for instant remedy against
even one more lonely night
in a stale bed,
under happy laughter & content
grins
of finally seeing a sunflooded fragment
of real space in real time, a short glimpse
of what salvation could really mean
(if man would only open his eyes),
under the sound of leaves
falling in autumn
decomposing during winter, and
growing again in wild-colored spring,
under the street musician's roar
of pure accordion joy,
desire, and longing
(no pennies in his hat),
under train wheels screeching
in a tunnel deep
under the city's noon glare,
making people cringe with
pain and disgust,
under a market vendor's warm
"Anything else?"
as she hands plastic bags
of groceries over the counter
with a low-fat decaf smile to go,
under winds of meat
and poultry drifting over
the sidewalk along butchers' lane
annoying passing vegetarians,
under a proto-dadaist punster's
bronze gaze over the market square,
flowers at his feet, word plays
within his protruding cold skull,
under sweaty brows & heavy breaths
of people carrying groceries home
under a hot July sun
("... and don't forget the wine this time!"),
under muffled steps of
camera-laden, guide-led tourists
rushing through churches,
suddenly appalled by the
morbid beauty of Saint Munditia,
under clangs of an old carillon
and foreigners' hustle and bustle
to get the best view possible,
under a policeman's bored yawn
watching over Reichenbach Street
(a loaded machine gun in his hand)
showing disoriented goyim the
way to a hidden back yard museum,
under the disillusioned debris of no
victory's gate
near the place where an ancient proud story
once burned and petrified in history is turned
into stone and mortar and colored glass again,
under a Dachau survivor's gaze
at traffic lights he installed
all over the city after the war
(only few people remember
that part of his story),
under Herr Meyer's exiled dreams of a
free Russia
over a glass of beer in Schelling Salon
and a bum's late 20th century warning of
the Reds conquering East Park,
under intelligentsia's fire wound
renewed every year, another generation's
machine gun holes on walls
preserved under plexiglass,
and metal outcries of humanity
scattered beneath the feet of
a future intelligentsia,
under the splashing of
neo-Grecian fountains on the
edge of a bridge over a
river gone wild after a long winter,
under a young girl chanting
folk tunes in a sleepy side street,
her parents looking on
with amusement and pride,
under an old man opening
his weatherbeaten newsstand
("PRESSE FRANCAISE")
every morning at 7:30 sharp,
under a graceful gesture as simple
as eating an apple by the lake or
smoking a cigarette, leaning
against a 1950s street lamp,
under childhood memories
of rainstorms in Denmark, thunder in Brittany,
and bright lightning over Sardinia,
under a jazz band's early evening
sound check in a dark cellar bar
hinting at dazzling eargasms
of a very last after midnight encore,
under the clicking and buzzing of
the movie projector in a dark
underground movie theatre,
under friendly words whispered
in starry-spangled night streets
resounding in the listeners' ears
in blue dreams of mornings to come,
under love lifting its head briefly
but finally amounting to nothing much
except for fading memories
alive in fake technicolor dreams,
under many long sleepless nights
fuelled by the whole damn catalogue of
"la condition humaine",
under silent doubts and ruminations as
to
whether the world exists for everyone separately
and ideas of how to still find some common ground
- the famous "last things",
under "so whatcha been doin'
lately?"
"oh, y'know... nothing special..."
(whole lives raging within,
burning to finally break free)
"well... see ya later, man!"
(conversations from numb dreams -- reality),
under the rustling sound of pages in
book after book after book after book
bought in second hand stores, read on trains,
devoured in sunny roadside cafes, and
meditated over under the soft yellow
glow of 60 watt bedside globes,
under strangely discarnate pangs
for the sudden knowledge that
he'll never be mediocre enough
to live up to his own modest expectations,
under enigmatic fingerprint smiles
fading into rural infinity ending
in royal darkness at Munich East station,
and dignitaries of the mind
rotting in soft Venetian earth,
under the poet's desperate attempts
to remember all the images
resting behind his receding brow
before amnesia strikes again
or eternity finally wraps him in real good,
under the gasping discovery
of the real meaning of words
down to the last syllable
counted for pure pleasure,
down to the last letter
scribbled hastily on used
books' yellowed cover pages,
down to the last sound from lips
unabashed to speak the truth,
down to the last thought hanging
in mid air until it bursts
silently like a soap bubble,
under generations of writers
restlessly browsing bookstores
in search of a title, a sentence,
a line, a word, even a single letter
that would let them overcome
the barrier between mind and hand,
the barrier within every dichotomy there is
up to The Final Dichotomy,
under ridiculous mistakes--
made, analyzed, understood
-- over and over again,
under stories told and retold,
songs sung and resung,
battles fought and refought,
pains suffered and resuffered,
loves happy and unhappy endured for ages,
under dreams invented,
but never lived out, on the road
between Genesis and Gehenna,
under legions of guys and girls
walking down Utopia Lane
in the presence of something
bigger than themselves,
under a few scattered goyim
anxiously holding their slipping paper
kippot in an ancient synagogue,
earning amused smiles from
"Sprechen Sie Deutsch?" guides,
under tourists on a quest for
the miracle of a golden city,
but Golem fell asleep and decayed
a long time ago already
(hardly anybody left to protect anyway),
under Venetian live jazz overheard
from across the Canale Grande
in front of the main station,
under songs of street-wise birds in the
park
mingling with kids' joyful yells,
oompah waves from a nearby beergarden,
and the sound of a drummer practicing
under a large oak tree -- the sound of summer,
under candid sighs of tearful eyes
shaded against the low morning sun
and the screeching of brakes
before supernaturally red traffic lights
shining through bushes & trees,
under sighs of know-all scholars
suddenly realizing that all their knowledge
might be rendered useless and absurd by
one single book, one single sentence,
even one small word,
under civilisation's background noise
drowning civilisation's essence
and everything connected,
under endless discussions
if I had been right or
you had been right or
he had been right, or
she had been right, when
nobody could possibly have been right
from the very beginning of it all,
under the pointlessness of
communication
in the presence of civilization's white noise
and the immensity of everything beyond,
under a righteous man's
endearing effort to get
along relatively well in life
without angering all his clay idols,
not even offending the Unknown God,
under sightings of young Burroughs
at Munich university, moustached Brautigan and
boyish Ginsberg on a midnight train zooming
out of town toward dark east, Kerouac sweating
in the mountains, Doktor Freud on the tram,
Golda Meir in a crowded Copenhagen museum --
and never a camera at hand,
under a Friday messiah's explanations
of how the universe would
work just brilliantly if rush hour
would only listen to him
in his ragged XXL shirt,
under a Jehovah's Witness's silent
unwavering posture of knowing for sure
what He wants him to do,
which right now is offering some
magazines to anyone who cares,
under true Buddhas singing out
their own hearts' delight, living in
the counter-bliss of time
calmly awaiting enlightenment,
under modern mystics' efforts
to reconcile once & for all
the esoteric with the exoteric
and avoid all spiritual patchwork
(an admirable yet hopeless task),
under the constant clicking
of Geiger counters
modified to trace emotions,
memories, and dreams
to their origin in the void,
under tormented thinkers' half-loud
whispers
of formulae of alien beauty,
which they hope will
help them clearly see the world as it really is,
help them clearly see themselves as they really are,
or at least help them see only the formulae themselves,
under joyous yells of the cursed
and worried sighs of the blessed
(neither knows it any better),
under one man's larger-than-life task
to EXTERMINATE NOISE,
under one life's final gaze
transfixed by that long sought-for
writing on the wall,
under the early afternoon
birth cries of a world
saved by poetry,
you hear the sound
of God -- smiling
smiling
smiling
smiling
-- until everything finally ends
in horrendous screams
suddenly turning
into triumphant yells
of deliverance the moment
everything breaks free
between sweaty sheets
on crumpled beds,
with impossible screeches of terror
turning into a coarse liberation song
baring endless soul travesties
to the naked mind's hungry eye
recording everything on memory's
endless tape echoing
birth cries of a world saved by poetry -
echoing in tears
shamefully wiped away
in amazement, realizing
the possibility of a different world
echoing
echoing
echoing
birth cries of a world saved by poetry
echoing in God's deafening smile.
© Yentz Melanov
