CANTO 21 Let no voices

 

Let no voices beyond then sing

when the song sings of its own song

or the words fly off on their own

sing them into emptiness

which is the fullness of no song at all

words drift in and out of this calm

where their use is as arbitrary as happiness

without reference to levels of sense

charmed into being at the edge of perception

a silken mathematical web rising in nothingness

and then sinking in glowing liquid syllables

as might be sung on a night when all contending

frames of reference are an equation of the moon

a song then so lost in its own remoteness

against the clamor of the hunger of sense

that the moon is the merest fantasy

and every vision provisional

when the song sings of its own song

before being anyone’s song and dance

before being an arrangement of a dance tune

words drifting where there are no ideas

words without a song that are still sung

in and out of this calm