Resonance

by Sylvia Evelyn
Babilu
Honorable Mention, July 2017
Judged by Tim Mayo


In perpetuum, stilled sounds from your bedroom
check my futile gestures. The window opens
on oppressive air, air numbing my senses,
leaden air that’ll not suffer sounds anew,
tamed and smooth, departed in unsullied peace.

When the window’s unlatched there’s a hush:
sounds primed to make themselves present,
stay their headlong rush towards my waiting ears.
Each time it’s the same, and the sounds are the same,
dejà senti, magnetic in the stillness of memory.

If spontaneous sounds revisited, grief would return,
my wanton motions would astonish even the rain,
sounds sounds sounds of an essence gone;
brief muzzled beats would provoke pain,
un-stilled stillness causing havoc in time’s flow.

Everything would reappear, the sterile sorrow,
discordant singularities in endless succession,
echo of gesticulations unbolting the shutters.

No- No muted sounds from your vacant room:
sounds sounds, those sounds will not return.