A Miracle of Music

 

for Tomas Murray

 

I

 

I recall that first time I heard you play, four years ago;

the proclamation hung above our Living Room hearth.

There were all tones of melanin, jamming,

you fathered a beep-bopping Muslim, a few months your junior,

enthralled by the sounds that rolled round his mouth;

believed rap to be the folk music of Generation X,

replete with certain ghetto truths,

 

and taught him complex frets and spidering time signatures.   

The friendship group pooled their instruments,

like guns in bygone days, the guitar settled on your lap.

You sat on the house carpet, amongst drained cans,

‘dead men’ and scattered cigarette ashes,

sang ‘Let it Be’ and ‘One Love’, a cooing dove,

a feiry passion, thundering through your throat.

 

 

II

 

I watch you still, my countrymen and comrade,

standing on the stage, the light dulling like sunset,

your concert in a tavern in the heart of famine country –

two hundred miles from Temple Bar.

You imagined ghosts silent in the darkness,

shadows inked into mud and horsehair walls,

a scared little boy when the bedroom light’s turned off.

 

Your tongue loosed by those sacred syllables,

the Gaelstracht, our former language –

the tin whistle danced at your lips,

the crowd thronged, you switched instruments,

your skin sweated against the plastic chin rest of your fiddle

and your foot roved on to the rhythm of your song.

I’d followed you, even then, across a nation.

 

III

 

Months later, paralysed from the neck down

and speechless. Your legs, that had so often liberated others

in dance, were lifeless; your foot, unfeeling. 

In the fretful dark of a hospital ward,

you withered into yourself and the starch bed sheets.

But, like your eight year old self, orphan of beatings,

chancing on that first guitar in the gifts to St Vincent de Paul,

 

music roused you from the semi-comatose. We brought CD’s.

Your lips began to quiver. I, who had been taught to love again, 

through your non-committal love,

saw your salvation in music. You heard your favourite songs

and small miraculous movements shook you lips.

These turned to sounds. One day we came in to find

you tapping your foot against the bed's railings. And singing, softly.

 

Reviews

[Nan]

I love this story Sel. You put it together lovingly with living scenes about
a musician's rise to power. But mostly it's about music and one's love of
the craft and love's love of someone. I don't know if it's biographical, I often
see you writing things you find in your imagination. However it is, I like the
slice of life style and how it builds.

Just one thing, I think I would change the tense in the second strophe

I watch you still, my countrymen and comrade,

[stood] on the stage, the light dulling like sunset, [standing]

your concert in a tavern in the heart of famine country �

two hundred from Temple Bar.

You imagined ghosts silent in the darkness,

shadows inked into mud and horsehair walls,

a scared little boy when the bedroom light's turned off.

I think I understand your meaning, as if someone "stood" him on stage, not by his own
power. Maybe "frozen" or something else that means afraid could work. I think the idea is
clear and using "stood" seems redundant. That's only my eye though, you decide.

Beautiful work Sel, since I'm a musician and know so many of them, it really touches me
to read this one.

Nan

[PianoandPage]

what a beautiful story sel. part 2 was my favorite. the atmosphere "mud and horsehair walls", the energy, rythmn. you put me there.

you create a great personal history around music. the ending had me THIS close to heartbreak and then you pulled out some hope. i love the ending.

music truly performs miracles.

[Mark Pearce]

Well composed...

and with a rewarding conclusion.

Music means more after reading this.



Mark Pearce

[Gandré]

Well, now I feel shivering. Amazingly well written. This is not poetry but a rhythmical mendering of an experimental psychology situation, the relation between the offered semi-physical stimuli and their psychological effects on his life......arranged on the plate tasteful with a convivial verse in a deprived athmosphere of this almost hopelessness, was virtuous and brilliance, my dear. Favorite 5 stars, for heaven's sake get published I want a book. love. lara.

[Ken Simm.]

Oh this is wonderful. Fits so succinctly. It is melodic in its own right. A prose song/history. Excellent and hello again Sel.

[W.k.kortas]

Not only evocative and emotional--but without descending into syrup and saccharine--but wonderfully visual and slice-of-life, peppered with the strong imagery and phrasing that is your hallmark. Finely crafted and powerful writing.

[Deborah Leah Krempa]

So sad and so beautiful. A wonderful writing/poem. Thank you for sharing. Debileah

[Emily B]

Oh, Sel. . . I wasn't prepared for section iii. I didn't see the hospital bed or the paralysis coming. Your narrative voice spins webs too intricate for unravelling. I lose myself in stories of a strange/familiar place. Here's to the miracles of love and music . . .