Until All That Was Left Was a Voice
I.
Fear wanted my name sealed within
A question not even my bluest instinct
Could unfold. But then the wind began to flutter
The first bright image I heard make the darkness sing.
To think, before this, I felt ready to lose the miracle
Of adding a few quiet feathers to the heart.
To think: I trusted that silence was my destiny.
***
You’ve believed before that your destiny was with silence.
Then a wanting suddenly feathered this bright instinct
Already added to your name, a windy heart
No question will seal or quiet, the bluest flutter.
Nothing can undo the miracle of hearing
What has yet to unfold. Trust what you began:
Only you can make your darkness sing.
II.
To banish that empty kind of praying, I try
Tilting this pain-invented loudness from my breath.
I swear a new season lives there. I hear it humming
With every reason to make the rain into an answer.
Whether I speak or stay silent, I desire
The good promise in each body to continue.
The sky is where I choose to look now.
***
Don’t forget the sky’s answer inside you,
Each rain-cloud kind of humming
With breath. Whether tried or tilted,
The right prayer will invent a new reason
Not to banish the good body still living there.
You can choose to hear it now, every season,
This emptying of any knowing that promises pain.
III.
I only mention more birds for the music
To soften the hurt of all connection. But shame would
Aim the infinity of my mind at another dead return
Failed by light. Sometimes, too many stilled wings
Rhyme with “never”—my limbs going so numb
Remembering what the hunch in my back couldn’t make
Stony or clear. I’m waiting for this to sound like safety…
***
To be clear and unmoved: your own listening is becoming a softness…
Even when reviving a dead hunch still drowning in blame,
You’ve never been known to mention a failure that couldn’t hold
The music of safety. If aimed at infinity, your mind remembers
Some numbed desires will rhyme with a hurt bird’s return—
But only to find the hymn for calling back more
Of the banished light. It sounds like many, many wings.
Support independent journalism that does not fall in line
Even before February 28, the reasons for Donald Trump’s imploding approval rating were abundantly clear: untrammeled corruption and personal enrichment to the tune of billions of dollars during an affordability crisis, a foreign policy guided only by his own derelict sense of morality, and the deployment of a murderous campaign of occupation, detention, and deportation on American streets.
Now an undeclared, unauthorized, unpopular, and unconstitutional war of aggression against Iran has spread like wildfire through the region and into Europe. A new “forever war”—with an ever-increasing likelihood of American troops on the ground—may very well be upon us.
As we’ve seen over and over, this administration uses lies, misdirection, and attempts to flood the zone to justify its abuses of power at home and abroad. Just as Trump, Marco Rubio, and Pete Hegseth offer erratic and contradictory rationales for the attacks on Iran, the administration is also spreading the lie that the upcoming midterm elections are under threat from noncitizens on voter rolls. When these lies go unchecked, they become the basis for further authoritarian encroachment and war.
In these dark times, independent journalism is uniquely able to uncover the falsehoods that threaten our republic—and civilians around the world—and shine a bright light on the truth.
The Nation’s experienced team of writers, editors, and fact-checkers understands the scale of what we’re up against and the urgency with which we have to act. That’s why we’re publishing critical reporting and analysis of the war on Iran, ICE violence at home, new forms of voter suppression emerging in the courts, and much more.
But this journalism is possible only with your support.
This March, The Nation needs to raise $50,000 to ensure that we have the resources for reporting and analysis that sets the record straight and empowers people of conscience to organize. Will you donate today?
