A Little Inchoiry

It is rare indeed when I am privileged to spend a Sunday morning at home in San Francisco. It was one of those rare Sundays in May of this year, when my wife and I were luxuriating in the reading of some wonderful poetry, that we came across this poem. Tears welled up in my eyes, I shouted with delight, and I knew at that moment you must hear this poem, too.

In an interview with Bill Moyers, recorded in Moyers' book Fooling With Words, Mark Doty describes how this poem came to be. It seems he was attending a performance by the local choral society of the Christmas portions of Handel's Messiah. Just before going into the church he noticed an absolutely magnificent sunset. He paused to view the sunset for a while, and as he went into the church he asked himself whether any human activity, let alone a small-town choral society Messiah performance, could equal the grandeur and beauty of that sunset. His poem answers that question. For all of you who are involved in singing, whether in a sophisticated choral group or an amateur choir, this poem is a must-read. I think you will have a new appreciation for what happens when folk sing together.

MESSIAH (CHRISTMAS PORTIONS) Mark Doty

A little heat caught
in gleaming rags,
in shrouds of veil,
torn and sun-shot swaddlings:

over the Methodist roof,
two clouds propose a Zion
of their own, blazing
(colors of tarnish on copper)

against the steely close
of a coastal afternoon, December,
while under the steeple
the Choral Society

prepares to perform
Messiah, pouring, in their best
blacks and whites, onto the raked stage.
not steep, really,

but from here,
the first pew, they're a looming
cloudbank of familiar angels:
that neighbor who

fights operatically
with her girlfriend, for one,
and the friendly bearded clerk
from the post office

--tenor trapped
in the body of a baritone? Altos
from the A&P, soprano
from the T-shirt shop:

today they're all poise,
costume and purpose
conveying the right note
of distance and formality.

Silence in the hall,
anticipatory, as if we're all
about to open a gift we're not sure
we'll like;

how could they
compete with sunset's burnished
oratorio? Thoughts which vanish,
when the violins begin.

Who'd have thought
they'd be so good? Every valley,
proclaims the solo tenor,
(a sleek blonde

I've seen somewhere before
--the liquor store?) shall be exalted,
and in his handsome mouth the word
is lifted and opened

into more syllables
than we could count, central ah
dilated in a baroque melisma,
liquefied; the pour

of voice seems
to make the unplaned landscape
the text predicts the Lord
will heighten and tame.

This music
demonstrates what it claims:
glory shall be revealed. If art's
acceptable evidence,

mustn't what lies
behind the world be at least
as beautiful as the human voice?
The tenors lack confidence,

and the soloists,
half of them anyway, don't
have the strength to found
the mighty kingdoms

these passages propose
--but the chorus, all together,
equals my burning clouds,]
and seems itself to burn,

commingled powers
deeded to a larger, centering claim.
These aren't anyone we know;
choiring dissolves

familiarity in an up-
pouring rush which will not
rest, will not, for a moment,
be still.

Aren't we enlarged
by the scale of what we're able
to desire? Everything,
the choir insists,

might flame;
inside these wrappings
burns another, brighter life,
quickened, now,

by song: hear how
it cascades, in overlapping,
lapidary waves of praise? Still time.
Still time to change.

From Sweet Machine by Mark Doty.
HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., New York, NY 10022
Copyright 1998 by Mark Doty.

Fooling with Words by Bill Moyers.
William Morrow & Co., October, 1999