Alien Music

I do not know the sweet songs of these people

Or the sharp songs

Beating to a harder rhythm

To scour the soul with anger’s oblivion.

I have not grieved their griefs.

I have not moved my feet

To the beat

Staccato and inverted

Then turned right way up

A moment,

Then to plunge to places

I cannot follow

By body or by mind.

The things that soothe them

Do not sustain me,

I find no comfort there,

Having already more than in their wildest dreams,

Their dreams cut like my nightmares,

I have not walked that country of small hopes.

The things that whisper

In my deepest night

Cannot speak their language,

And,

Shamed by my own plenty,

I learn at last to weep.