It was the custom of my tribe to be silent, to think the song inwardly, tune and word so beautiful they could be only held, not sung; held and heard in quietness while walking the end of the field where birches make a grove, or standing by the rail in back of the library in some northern city, or in the long dream of a tower of gothic stoniness; and always we were alone. Yet sometimes two heard it, two separately together. It could come nearby in the shadow of a pine bough on the snow, or high in the orchestral lights, or maybe (this was our miracle) it would have no intermediary -- a suddenness, indivisible, unvoiced. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org |