Concert

I am here again, in this same concert
where so many evenings I have listened--
listened, heard, and pondered--pondered, shuddered--
shuddered, wept, and died without an answer.

So to feel, to listen, and to ponder--
thus to know the gravest weight of sadness,
such sadness that one cannot even cry,
cannot make a single sound of sorrow--

oh, it is to these gods that I offer
all my heart; I lift it up in worship,
hold in both my hands its smell and flavor,
to an unmoved sky that gives no answer,

and I feel the blood trace pulsing rivers
down my arms until it drips on it:
on that empty body that lies quiet
under me and is me and is not me.

Where does my last finger end? In what place
is the cry of clarinet beginning?
And how soon will it become unquestioned
that beneath my skin there's only powder?

And when will that powder melt away, like
sugar, into all the thick, warm liquid--
liquid that is glockenspiel and 'cello
and the tambourine and rounded horn call?

Is it possible to live without it?
I despair of ever understanding.
Just to cease, to cease to know, and after
to become a being of the light-beam,

emptying myself of all the painful,
maddeningly screaming ear-knife-terror,
knowledge of what was and is and will be--
if I do this, what then could I not do?

But the sound that's trapped inside, unanswered,
hammers on my headache to escape me.
Though I open wide and breathe in deeply,
nothing happens, and my voice is silent.