Sovereign

Song no. 4 on "None and All"

Perhaps I answered well
when lastly I compared myself
to a river’s running water
corroding slowly all that in it dwells;
it can’t but take the shortest path;
it can’t but flow below, beside, and past
whatever stands before it,
even that which once it wanted;
you’re right to question where this ends,
you’re right to fear each fall and bend,
and you’re right to ask my reason,
but like the river I don’t speak that tongue.

I know movement and direction,
I know noise and swelling lungs,
I know voice without inflection,
and I know that I’m never done;
I trust that when I reach the sea
and all my life pours out of me,
that it will bear this pregnancy
until our children all squirm free,
and with them I will grow
until our banks are overflown,
and the spring brings us in spate
to where the next departure waits.

Yes, for each and all my doubts,
every famine, every drought,
and for every scornful glance,
every eye I caught askance,
there’s many more within
all begging to begin:
a little god, a grinning beast,
a sovereign king, a servile priest,
a restive wife, a brazen cheat,
tender love and mad conceit;
the sky is a field of shining wheat
and theirs the blade that swings and reaps.

But though they may wrangle for control,
decry the old, themselves extol,
test each other’s feet and force,
they none and all can sway my course;
for when I hear them speak their mind
and sift through all the sense I find—
when I take one and all in view
I see but one abiding truth:
though each and every piece of me
will always wish that they were free
to impart to all what they’ve received,
whatever happened to fill their reveries—
though they took root like any seed
wherever they found air to breathe
and earthen flesh on which to feed,
and they will tangle each with each—
attend to them until they bore,
until your eyes have spied themselves sore,
and you will see a single form
spilling out toward all and more.

So perhaps I answered well
when lastly I compared myself
to a river’s running water
corroding slowly all that in it dwells;
I know movement and direction,
I know noise and swelling lungs,
I know voice without inflection,
and I know that I’m never done.