- Listening to Glass
Strange voicings sang a melody at the endOf the street—Sleepers Wake!—a Parisian’s hand
Ran lightly over goblet lips and playedA sound like one I’d heard at Easter, made
By handbells, but the glasses breathed belowEach sound, the streak of his touch a glance of snow.
He blew the glass himself for certain tones,Shaping them in a fire. How he tunes
A ball of molten glass to anythingAnd phrases Bach cantata or simple song
Left like a ghost to be plucked out of the airAnd memory stuns me. I’d heard glass before:
One night at dinner, my high school girlfriend’s fatherPlayed a note, tracing his wetted finger
Around the rim of her mother Kathy’s crystal.The index he would use to fire the pistol
In two months time, his body icing deadAt the foot of his own father’s grave, a bed
Of new year snow. If the gun’s reportFelled icicles, I’d hoped they spiked his heart—
Indignant, though he wasn’t even mineTo feel abandoned by. I was no one [End Page 203]
Worthy to damn him however vexed I felt.Unhappy in our skins, our ghosts want out.
It wouldn’t be long until I grabbed a knifeAnd considered stitching myself a new French cuff.
I thought he was a coward, but might have followed.I think the unforgiving will not be harrowed.
Karen and I once came to Paris, dazedBy jet lag and Notre Dame. Its rose window blazed
Silently to the stone. All of that glassCould melt into an orchestra and surpass
Cathedral bells for serenading heaven.A breath, the street musician’s waves enliven
From reverie to Slavonic dance. The riseA chromatic flourish, then, at least, a pause.
I can’t recall the note Ken played that nightOr say if resolution would make it right.
But I keep listening for a place whereThe glass vibrations still hum in the air. [End Page 204]
JASON GRAY is the author of Photographing Eden, winner of the Hollis Summers Prize, and two chapbooks: How to Paint the Savior Dead and Adam & Eve Go to the Zoo. He co-edits the online journal Unsplendid and serves as the associate editor for The Writer’s Chronicle.