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Saturday, February 16, 2013

Music - Day 16 topic of the 30M2D Writing Challenge

Music - the 30M2D writing challenge topic and link to the other music makers. 

I so love poetry and collect books of the same.  I thought this poem fit the day's topic.

A MUSIC

I employ the blind mandolin player
in the tunnel of the Metro, I pay him
a coin as hard as his notes,
and maybe he has employed me, and pays me
with his playing to hear him play.

Maybe we're necessary to each other,
and this vacant place has need of us both
--it's vacant, I mean, of dwellers,
is populated by passages and absences.

By some fate or knack he has chosen
to place his music in this cavity
where there's nothing to look at
and blindness costs him nothing.
Nothing was here before he came.

His music goes out among the sounds
of footsteps passing.  The tunnel is the resonance
and meaning of what he plays.
It's his music, not the place, I go by.

In this light which is just a fact, like darkness
or the edge or end of what you may be
going toward, he turns his cap up on his knees
and leaves it there to ask and wait, and holds up
his mandolin, the lantern of his world.

his fingers make their pattern on the wires.
This is not the pursuing rhythm
of a blind cane pecking in the sun,
but is a singing in a dark place.
Wendell Berry


12 comments:

  1. What a wonderful poem. Great choice, Tami. :)

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  2. An interesting and unique take on the prompt, this poem/story.

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  3. I haven't heard Wendell Berry's poetry since I was in college, when I had a professor who loved his work, and this one is a beauty.

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  4. This is lovely Tami. I really liked it a lot.

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  5. I have never read that... it is just gorgeous!

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  6. Hey Tami!

    "This is not the pursuing rhythm
    of a blind cane pecking in the sun,
    but is a singing in a dark place."

    That's a great image! Indigo

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  7. Very nice poem. Good take on the theme. :)

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  8. With it's rhythm poetry is a lot like music, isn't it.

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  9. The language and observations in this poem are fantastic. I've never read this one, so thanks for sharing, Tami.

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  10. Wonderful! I love the thought of maybe being "necessary to each other."

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