Transmission Transmission

  So he who strongly feels, behaves.        —Marianne Moore You find in an alley the mouthpiece of a flute. Gossip alone makes music and suddenly from the pines the birds all fly away. You are devoted to giving clear meaning to one movement. The water in the fountain. Down the fountain. Over it. The prayer chapel but its brick bench. Magnolias in almost bloom. The failure to believe in mathematics is a failure of emotion— you have spent all of your free time. Choral directors describe the torso in terms of the muscles of sound. Your wife paints your two-year-old’s fingernails and the two-year-old says, toes too! Sitting next to an anthill feels like this. They work so hard. And for so little. For salvation. This is the mystery. This is forgiveness.

Nov 25, 2014 / Books & the Arts / Gary L. McDowell