she, I, & Scriabin
we three sit together
under the dazzling light of his brilliance
I occasionally talk to myself.
pedals clunk under her bare feet,
room fills with
crazy openings & closings & half-closings,
jazz waltzes past ragtime, swings
through
coaxing back old images, millions of lifetimes…
smoky horn from an apartment over lamplit
dark old
he, dead in
having already found his ‘mystical chord’ (c, f-sharp, b-flat, e’, a’, d”),
somehow he lived through it all,
or it all lived through him.
she, fellow explorer, way-farer, fellow coper,
fellow goer-with-the-flow…
like me unable to settle, wanting to be everything
& do everything,
& burdened with everybody’s pain.
the whole world suffers in us,
cruelly, or ignorantly, or both,
the whole world is undervalued.
yet sometimes we find ourselves floated up
on a centerless, immeasurable joy.
keys flutter, bass throbs,
the same deep something shudders in us at the music…
ahh! so huge to be human!
sometimes it’s too much to bear,
& we sing.