When the sun goes down you move
horizontal you become everything
in the world at once rather than waking
like vertical where you obsess over
ascend or descend or whatever rain
at the edge of the building spit forth
by gargoyles does drown yourself in the jizz
of the world no shape of narrative
I’m lost but thrilled sun yellow still
inside my self I am a pocket for the other
day already gone Sheila hillbilly
iconoclast seizes the song in the cage
of her throat drawls not the edge of it
but its music entire
•
Sheila Chandra has been rendered mute
the ambassador of sound gray clouds
compromise the day auctioned off
siphoned off betrayed by the failure
of nerve endings and science no cure
for Burnt Mouth Syndrome she sang
in Uzbek contorted her tongue around
words she never knew learned even
the language of the drum away from
melody there is only harmony in the
outer districts of the city of sound ordinary
spaces empty bandstand atonal landscape
sea’s surface in the morning before the day
traffics its contours
•
In a world governed by storm and noise why
then should a singer not fall silent though
by great suffering her mouth that orchestra
hall aflame the drone her most miniscule
movement still do the echoes resound
even now can I discern them Anish Kapoor
explores the place sight disappears rich
dark that opens he makes shapes of them
invites you to understand or learn where
the effort to understand fails Agnes
Martin her shapes of white absence both
what when the throat fails sounds out does
Sheila still listen to music what does it
sound like
•
Calligraphy is a meeting point
between abstract and particular
by certain combinations of visual
marks to make symbols Chandra
lost her voice around the same
time I found mine at midnight
we went to swim in the sea so
we could be in the dark and not
know the bottom but the moon
lit up the surface so silver so
slammed and then the boy
with the fear of failure voice
architecture god depths death
he swam
•
One cannot manipulate expression or
do you fold and fold your voice fool
sound is sound the building block
of the universe sea so clear I can see
thirty feet down even from the terrace
the waves roar and the conversation
of those out on the water somehow
carries sound of ice melting in my
glass of boat engines the singing
insects everything interrupts I hid
in the Matisse Chapel I did not want
to know how the shape of sound
appears an object grows more powerful
in the imagination
______
excerpts from “The Voice of Sheila Chandra”; read the full poem in our Winter 2019 issue.