for Nora Paley
The sound rang out
as if the life itself (and everyone touched)
became the sound
a bowl rung loud rung round, oh!
Grace herself ringing loud as the fierce life-loving sun.
A bowl, ready and clean
the song of empty
sound rang out
A fire in the everyday belly of the sun
cried out a name
We heard it—and another, not yet known
the name of death as our own.
We could reach
outside of wild imagining
because of you
Living on
Nora heard it
above the ground growing wide along the earth
traces of fireburst in red salvia
moving through the full crown of leaves, sky’s longer dark,
frozen ground, dry cold and numbered shards of ice
sound folding into lakebed bottom spring summer
days of sun and nourishing mud
Nora went rigid in the sun
all fluid tick-ticking
inside the marrow of her bones—
a chord played in her blood,
all given in preparation and given over on the day
whatever fiber
was left
unsounded, filled with sound
Pulled, kept moving
by forces outside
her,
by her own children swimming
in their grief lonely bones up the hill where Grace lived
Grief will not leave urgent whispers greening
The sound will not leave
Nora—
her throat, a pitcher dry as bone
pouring pain no chord could play
the soundless song
The winter offered quiet at least
early dark a burying winter
so the sound could sleep
in the bare sky
be a naked branch
or cupping cold
Perhaps the sound will stay
A cloth can wipe the table
four chairs Pull up another
and winter can be buried without Grace
Beatrix Gates’ collections include In the Open and Ten Minutes. She shared a Witter Bynner Translation Award with Electa Arenal for The Poems of Vikram Babu by Jesús Aguado (HOST). As librettist, Gates received support with composer Anna Dembska from the NEA for “The Singing Bridge” which premiered in 2005.