Hear it in the Rain

To hear it in the rain, lying in the back seat
of a ’62 Valiant, parked on the new streets
for housing not being built because of the
daily torrential downpour

DAH da DAH dada

Wind rocking the car, listening.
Would it be possible? To hear it?
To select out, from the aural field

DAH da DAH dada DAH DAH dada DAH DAH

to actually have it manifest, repeating,
a stichic flow projected onto the rain

DAH da DAH dada DAH DAH dada DAH DAH dada DAH da DAH
“Love, what ailed thee to leave life, that was made lovely, we thought, with love?”
DAH da DAH dada DAH DAH dada DAH DAH dada DAH da DAH
His whole mind focused to hear it in the rain

Stimmen, Stimmen. Höre, mein Herz, wie sonst nur
Heilige Hörten: daß sie der riesige Ruf
aufhob vom Boden; sie aber knieten,
Unmögliche, weiter und achtetens nicht:
So waren sie hörend.

During the day, piano wire, stringing the lyres of grands
at night cable movie projection unit
VCRs, stacks of humming circuit boards
Taxi Driver three times a night
LIfeguard three times a night
Return of the Pink Panther three times a night
while he slowly worked his way through
the Duino Elegies word by word, tracing out
connotations and synonyms, feeling them
build and echo. Stimmen. Stimmen.

And at night, the rain.

Listening. Listening

to hear the greater Asclepiad, the second book of Sappho
to be recovered in the rain, Alcaeus manifest
Theocritus in complete poems written by torrents.
“What sweet visions of sleep lured thee away, down from the light above?
What strange faces of dreams, voices that called, hands that were raised to wave,
Lured or led thee, alas, out of the sun, down to the sunless grave?”

He became nothing, hearing the rain, reaching through sound for an abstract beat.
Dozing, waking to hear Lesbian verse echoing from the sky.

And then sleep. And rain in the sleep. And dreams in the rain of sound.

(Here the fragment ends)