Yah
       

You can hear the tremor of the ouds of ancient Morocco

          in the distant cousin, the Spanish guitar,

                                                          and the Moor in the morning
            prayer, the djembe in the snap of the dancer's fan,

the vihuela in the viola, you hear the plectrum in the word
                    oud, whose echo lute
          you hear in some girl's voice
                    in Northern Europe, and the Babylonian

chordophone whose name we lost, you hear its music
            in an old stone engraving, because spirit does that,

it cuts the stone away, music dies into music and the new there cuts you
            open, you hear the sternum

                                                of the instrument shiver because we make it
          light, strong, we break it in, you hear

            the high pitches of the medical machine,
as the patient sleeps, and the bad heart is lifted from its chamber,

          the harvest of the other,
                                                fresh from the cooler, lies down in the dark
          warm pit,

            and the man who receives, he told his child once:
          The Iron Age gave us our own word Yah,
                                                that lies in turn in the Hebrew alleluia,

and about now the boy in the chorus, he is wondering if his
father will survive,

          and if you listen hard, he is in there still,
                    the child as the father of the music he becomes.

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Copyright © 2019 Bruce Bond All rights reserved
from Colorado Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission