Everywhere their whispers settle on us.
By day and night we pace the streets surrounded by
filigreed pilasters of sunken regimes.
Virtuoso fingers on the soundboard brush the dust from
ancient apotheoses in the taper-lit hallways of pleasure palaces.
The landscapes evoked by singers burst from
Throats a thousand years ago.
Whistlings at the subway stop dance to the scat of dusky nightclubs.
A melisma can be heard across the sea.
The paisleys of living-room curtains stir from the winds of Zoroastrian mysteries.
A gawky adolescent strums on her guitar tablatures from the sirocco-swept sierra.
And if I try a rhetorical flourish to finish this poem,
It will most likely echo Seneca’s praise for Cicero,
And his words, in turn,
A poetess in ecstasy at the dawning of Mycenae.
Andy Oram is a writer and editor in the computer field. Print publications where his writings have appeared include The Economist, the Journal of Information Technology & Politics, and Vanguardia Dossier. He has lived in the Boston, Massachusetts area for 50 years. His poems have appeared in more than 60 journals.
