Vox Populi
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Fred Maus: I Listen to an Adagio by Ravel
.
Then, I know how to speak
with a single voice, meandering
onward, not clear whether
anyone is listening, pushing on
to the next word and the next,
not with a clear sense of
what comes next, but just
continuing to speak, calmly,
with feeling, with perception,
nothing false, nothing
for effect on myself
or another, just one phrase
and the next and the next.
Later, in a gorgeous glow,
I find that someone was listening,
someone who can repeat
everything word for word.
Who is it who makes me say
what I feel, and who listens,
and who understands so much?
Now, I will open the shades,
the day will come in,
the irreplaceable time that it is.
—
copyright 2015 Fred Maus
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Thanks, Luz, for this amazing response, which takes the poem in beautiful directions I never imagined.
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Beautiful poem…it reminds me of the silence of the masses of people passing everyday through the tunnels of transportation in a great city. When each person comes together will all the many others,they appear as a vast field of many small blue flowers. What if we bent down to look at one of them, and we observed it’s details. In most cases when I have looked closely at a small blue that stood among so many, I was amazed at it’s beauty and if it was fragrant, it’s fragrance. But what if as you were observing this one flower, it suddenly began to speak? What if what they said sounded like the beautiful verses of this poem; brilliant, subdued, humble. Then you would suddenly realize that they had been observing and thinking all the along.
As the flowers of this field, could each person in the masses passing through the tunnels of transportation in a big city, be as the grandchildren of the great fields of people that were disregarded as weak, just two and half centuries ago. These grandchildren, these field of flowers, are more free now, they can speak their minds more than in the past. It took many millenniums, and about the 18 century it was acknowledged that they were all brilliant, and that each had something important to say and to give. But for so long, too long, they were forced to keep quiet, and they were told they didn’t count, and that they should just work and take orders. That is the sound I hear in the poem “I listen to Adagio” by Fred Maus, it is free yet a hear the sound made by it’s ancestors. It’s an eloquence pure and honest, and perhaps only spoken to the stars, ” Now I know what he was saying when he was standing and watching the moon.”
It is said that in the 18 century many fought for their freedom to express their thoughts, because it was believed that each was distinct. The history sounds too good to be true, there were some sordid details, but that is actually the general thrust of the events of the time. Each one can speak more now, at least that is what they say! But we are are still fighting for the right of all the flowers, to be all they can be. We are still waiting for all those beautiful individual minds and voices to speak-up.
When you are up close to one of the many flowers passing through the tunnels of a great city, as a field of Baby-Blue Eye flowers in a great field, each are very special, and when they speak and say what they have seen and felt, they are brilliant; each is a complete universe unto themselves. I wish they would all suddenly stop, and find synchronicity. Then perhaps they will all recite or sing their thoughts through many words, and perhaps they will sound like a musical piece played by a great symphony orchestra.
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