In The
Beginning
In the beginning
there is sound.
The primordial sense,
animal, powerful.
Your slippery body,
slack-boned, weightless
feeling-out its shape,
as cells replicate, cascade
strain
at your extremities,
buzzing with growth.
Her heartbeat,
like a big bass tympani
with its steady nervous beat.
Great wattles of sound
thudding through
the muffled warmth.
And her distorted voice,
distant, yet immanent
and intimately close,
that will accompany you
into thin astringent air.
Startle reflex.
Stapes, incus, malleus,
membrane tautly stretched.
Cochlea, cranial
cerebral cortex.
Pinna, outer, inner,
hard of hearing
deaf.
He said, she said
out-of-context.
Selectively remembered,
forgotten
repressed.
And in the end
when you will have stopped listening
but still can hear.
The slow drip-drip-drip.
The bleeps and blips of monitors
banalities of talk.
The intimacies, and whisperings,
confessions
shared, or not.
As they sit, curtains drawn
lost in quiet thought.
And you will remember when
in an instant
a heartbeat stopped;
whisked
into cold hard light.
I've tended to think of smell as the most powerful sense: that it exists in the most ancient part of our reptilian brain; that it is so intimately connected with memory; that it intrudes not just into consciousness, but into deep emotion, even when we're not paying the least attention.
But I think sound may be more elemental. Not only does it convey language and music, in all their refined complexity, it is also omnipresent: we are receptive in all directions; it intrudes just as powerfully as smell; and we respond with the reflexive urgency of flight or flight to its slightest pin-drop of threat. And it is not just our first sense -- overwhelming present in the womb -- it is probably the last to die. Aside from that, the unconscious brain is constantly monitoring our acoustic environment. And the acoustic nerve is -- I believe -- faster than sight or touch, and radiates through the brain more widely.
When I started the poem, I had a vague idea of word-play with stapes, incus, malleus; or, better still, hammer and anvil. The word-play survives in the 5th stanza, and I think it ended up working pretty well.
"Immanent" was a tough call. I like to avoid big words; mostly because they stop the reader, who has to shift mental gears into a more intellectual processing mode. Or worse still, because a more obscure word literally stops the reader, who has to put down the poem to look it up! And considering that even I had to look it up to confirm its meaning, the decision to keep it certainly gave me pause. On the other hand, "immanent" (not "imminent", btw, for you too-quick readers and time-pressed skimmers) works really well, and sounds even better; so I made an exception, an indulgence which -- after a lot of self-restraint over the course of numerous poems -- I think I've earned.
The final line brings the poem full circle. Because it can be read as death recapitulating birth. We're all familiar with the so-called "near death experience", the trope of death as going toward the light at the end of a long dark tunnel. Here, I think the cold hard light calls back to the emergence, earlier in the poem, from the warm dark womb into life's thin astringent air. (Or maybe not, and this is first time you're seeing it this way!) Not that I believe in reincarnation; or any kind of life after death, for that matter. I believe that death is final: oblivion, annihilation. But it's fun to play with tantalizing possibilities, no matter how unlikely or wishful.
there is sound.
The primordial sense,
animal, powerful.
Your slippery body,
slack-boned, weightless
feeling-out its shape,
as cells replicate, cascade
strain
at your extremities,
buzzing with growth.
Her heartbeat,
like a big bass tympani
with its steady nervous beat.
Great wattles of sound
thudding through
the muffled warmth.
And her distorted voice,
distant, yet immanent
and intimately close,
that will accompany you
into thin astringent air.
Startle reflex.
Stapes, incus, malleus,
membrane tautly stretched.
Cochlea, cranial
cerebral cortex.
Pinna, outer, inner,
hard of hearing
deaf.
He said, she said
out-of-context.
Selectively remembered,
forgotten
repressed.
And in the end
when you will have stopped listening
but still can hear.
The slow drip-drip-drip.
The bleeps and blips of monitors
banalities of talk.
The intimacies, and whisperings,
confessions
shared, or not.
As they sit, curtains drawn
lost in quiet thought.
And you will remember when
in an instant
a heartbeat stopped;
whisked
into cold hard light.
I've tended to think of smell as the most powerful sense: that it exists in the most ancient part of our reptilian brain; that it is so intimately connected with memory; that it intrudes not just into consciousness, but into deep emotion, even when we're not paying the least attention.
But I think sound may be more elemental. Not only does it convey language and music, in all their refined complexity, it is also omnipresent: we are receptive in all directions; it intrudes just as powerfully as smell; and we respond with the reflexive urgency of flight or flight to its slightest pin-drop of threat. And it is not just our first sense -- overwhelming present in the womb -- it is probably the last to die. Aside from that, the unconscious brain is constantly monitoring our acoustic environment. And the acoustic nerve is -- I believe -- faster than sight or touch, and radiates through the brain more widely.
When I started the poem, I had a vague idea of word-play with stapes, incus, malleus; or, better still, hammer and anvil. The word-play survives in the 5th stanza, and I think it ended up working pretty well.
"Immanent" was a tough call. I like to avoid big words; mostly because they stop the reader, who has to shift mental gears into a more intellectual processing mode. Or worse still, because a more obscure word literally stops the reader, who has to put down the poem to look it up! And considering that even I had to look it up to confirm its meaning, the decision to keep it certainly gave me pause. On the other hand, "immanent" (not "imminent", btw, for you too-quick readers and time-pressed skimmers) works really well, and sounds even better; so I made an exception, an indulgence which -- after a lot of self-restraint over the course of numerous poems -- I think I've earned.
The final line brings the poem full circle. Because it can be read as death recapitulating birth. We're all familiar with the so-called "near death experience", the trope of death as going toward the light at the end of a long dark tunnel. Here, I think the cold hard light calls back to the emergence, earlier in the poem, from the warm dark womb into life's thin astringent air. (Or maybe not, and this is first time you're seeing it this way!) Not that I believe in reincarnation; or any kind of life after death, for that matter. I believe that death is final: oblivion, annihilation. But it's fun to play with tantalizing possibilities, no matter how unlikely or wishful.
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