I Wish I Could Speak Like Music
I wish I could speak like music.
I wish I could put the swaying splendor
Of the fields into words
So that you could hold Truth
Against your body
And dance.
I am trying the best I can
With this crude brush, the tongue,
To cover you with light.
I wish I could speak like divine music.
I want to give you the sublime rhythms
Of this earth and the sky’s limbs
As they joyously spin and surrender,
Surrender
Against God’s luminous breath.
Hafiz wants you to hold me
Against your precious
Body
And dance,
Dance.
–Hafiz
I just returned from a 4 day wedding commemoration for my life long friend Kevin and his partner of 22 years, Ed. The revelry just kept rolling out of us, as if none of us were willing to let this extraordinary celebration come to an end.
And of course the protracted partying included lots of dancing, literally and metaphorically. For a dancer like Kevin (who danced with the Irish Ballet) the literal dancing is emblematic of his life long love of moving his body, his limbs in motion. And the metaphoric dancing was the high spirited weaving together of a tangle of friends and family. By midlife most of us have assembled a hodge podge of connections and narratives, our own personal nest of multiple lives and identities. Sharing the crazy quilt multiplicity that is Kevin and Ed was an acknowledgment of their commitment to each other as well as a homage to the breadth and depth of their extraordinary lives.
How fitting to return home and find this poem left in a comment from poetry pal Pam McGrath. It does a better job of capturing my current state of mind than my ongoing protests of being language impaired. It deserves a spot of its own, right up front.
Pictures of the wedding and the spectacular (let me say that again–SPECTACULAR) new Renzo Piano Academy of Sciences will be coming too once my computer is resuscitated from an unexpected and disabling crash this morning. (Thank you Bryce for letting me commandeer your Powerbook for the time being.) Is this a case of a machine’s sympathetic vibration with a world that is imploding? Ray Kurzweil and others might suggest the answer is yes.
Beautiful post and poem for your friend. The best writing encompasses all our senses, and engages even the kinetic tendency and desire to romp in life – inabandoned beauty. G
Desire to romp, indeed. Thanks G.
I loved your Rumi quote but was expressing it differently at the same time on my blog and just reiterated with a reference to your lovely quote. I am at the quiet and mundane end of “beyond words,” complimenting your music and dancing.
I so like being in synch with you, QS…