for Marc Villá
I’m listening to a bad recording of Victor Jara
and even with all the distortion the voice
is clear as the sun shining crystalline
after days of rain.
There was a time when only
this voice could summon me from the void,
when I cherished his words as a monk does a Bible verse:
“no creo en nada, sino en el amor de los seres humanos.”*
Now I’m alone in the graveyard of my library,
yet the sun warms the cold room
as the voice of a dead poet warms my heart,
so full of despair this winter day.
Strange how something so transient as music,
ideas written on paper and bound in a book,
or echoes of a voice long silenced,
can outlast stones, rocks, bullets or bones.
*I don’t believe in anything but the love of human beings
Clifton Ross