Awake mine eyes, see Phoebus bright arising,
and lesser lights to shades obscure descending:
Glad Philomela sits tunes of joy devising,
whilst in sweet notes, from warbling throats,
the sylvan choir with like desire
to her are echoes sending.
Psalms, Songs, and Sonnets, 1611 William Byrd
we arrive inside, standing pew only
invisible voices begin to blow
vowels over our backs to them
renaissance vibrations spider from
one skull side to the other.
mea culpa, mea culpa,
mea maxima culpa, this is my fault,
my most grievous fault
noctem quietam, dominus omnipotens
my not so quiet night has not yet met its perfect end
the devil who is your enemy, not the devil who is your friend,
the devil then who is your fiend
and not your friend,
beato, beato, vitam aeternam,
blessed, blessed, everlasting life
that i do understand
in manus tuas, into thy hands,
sub umbra alarum tuarum protege nos,
protect us beneath the shadow of thy wings,
toes tangled in tingling, in throes, i cannot feel
my frozen roots from way up high here in the tone
clouds, we sway with the latinate phrase, skeleton
arranged for the most efficient hang
of muscle from bone, my chest is a sail,
my spirit blown, door open wide, gulping cedar scents,
this gift that must be calculated in the middle of a most ancient hour,
as sunlight, defeated, slides down the ornate glass, as a million
suns swallow its fractured colors,
and with it you remember
enduring a child's unendurable ceremony,
this way, for this long
you become an effigy of feeling, rehearsing the saint,
again pounding the nails into your own customized cross,
as a child once did, as a child was taught to always obey,
to suppress the question
until you can hold it firmly in your hands
until you can safely tie it around your weeping rose,
tightened until the blood sings like a brilliant old recusant
spared by a beneficent queen, while the oarsmen row,
dressed in suit & tie, dipping a netted oar
into the pew to catch whatever fell from our wallets
in mid-song, in mid-psalm,
nailed to the floor of a beached ashore ship,
are you a tourist, visiting what you were?
tossing to the waveful music of a man who lived
long enough to be forgotten while his sail still caught
wind, breathing, once upon a time ago, a dry quill
retired beside a noteful page.
so here we are,
standing inside the forbidding place, together & apart, as precise as feet,
always on your way to something, but never someone
surrounded by roses, stoned toward sky,
heart scooped out and filled with ah,
the flesh here is fresh, the muse muscled, the eyes
closed to seal the sound which circulates on a loop
from heart to head,
from head to heart,
never touching the earth,
the sky choir sings in secreto,
in manus tuas, into thy hands,
in manus tuas, their lips deliver the song,
et cum spiritu tuo,
and with thy spirit,
we are tied together.
