Songs of an Other

If there were another...

if there were an other
person I am he would
be heavy as the shadow

in a dying tree. The light
thickens into water
welling up to liven

whose eyes? who hides his mother
behind him mirrord in his
bride's gaze when the flame

darkens the music as he plays?
for I am here the Master of a Sonata
meant for the early evening

when in late Spring
the day begins to linger on
and we do not listen to the news

but let the wars and crises go
revering strife in a sound of our own,
a momentary leading of a tone

toward a conflicting possibility and then
fury so slowd down it lapese
into the sweetening melancholy of

a minor key, hovering toward refrain
it yet refrains from, I come into
the being of this other me,

exquisitely slone, everything about the voice
has it own solitude the speech
addresses and, still accompanied,

kindled thruout by you, every thought
of bride and groom comes to,
my other

cannot keep his strangeness separate
there is such a presence of "home
in every room I come to.

Robert Duncan