Singing in the Easter Choir beside My Enemy

A sustained tone, our conductor says, 
must narrate our belief: begin, develop, 
then patiently subside. That’s what she 
learned in the Welsh choirs of her 
youth, whose memory lifts and lowers 
her arms today. And memory 
is what music is, after all, braiding 
strands of tone into a language 
we almost understand, mistaking it, 
perhaps, for the Orient or an inland sea. 
Beyond that, she says, is a moment, 
one drop on a page 
that could land anywhere in the story 
of a voice. And that’s the instant that 
scares me, startles my tongue: 
that wire of unison, of tuning my throat 
to another’s for fellowship. Like the pulse 
of crickets at night: they might know better 
but can’t find a syllable worthier 
to plant in their wings. They sing that a night 
has many lives, and vice versa, and no 
one voice will do for all of them. 

Outside the chapel, the aspens rise up, 
shaking their best music from the branches. 
Inside, I and the man beside me tune our voices 
into the cadence, which ends in silence, 
which is the sound of forgetting, 
the sound of grief cancelled.