Harpsong Poem by Morgan Michaels

Harpsong-
forbidden,
strummed in secret or plucked out
at the harper's peril, the brazen tunes, lyrical
lessons of musical hedge-schools; needed
treacle of weddings and funerals, '
thought Turlough O'Carolan,
gripping her mane
and bending his back to the back of the mare
bumpily trotting the bad roads
beside watery green
boglands and sea-lanes and fields of morraine
and peaks that, cloud dropping sheets on,
disappeared, to glimmer back into view;
Harpsong
plaintive water-patter
ceaseless as the dew-
lodged in the rains
and rising from rain-spatter;
To the west, the warmth of sunlight
lured to itself his crumbling vision:
light, viewed scratchily through blocks of blur-
minimal, miasmal;
light even a blindman could see:
sealight, genial and diffuse.
Harpsong
the poem-preceding tune come following after.
'Boy, ' he shouted, to the darkness ahead, 'BOY! '
they were late, but only a day or so-
late for the feast-but 'what so? '
folks would wait a week or more;
'Yes, sir? '
for they needed him, in his way,
as important as the bride. Needed him,
as people rarely need a blind man, to begin.
'So, ' he concluded, grating his teeth,
snarkily, 'Let them wait, '
as the horse trotted on, repeating, repeated,
'Let them wait.'