Song Poem by Max Reif

When human beings lift a voice in song,
bowel movements, and quarrels somehow disappear.

These people at the Christian Conference at our hotel —
at breakfast in the cafe' this morning
I wondered which of the diners here are them,

and then I saw the telltale proof, the squat
black objects there, beside some at their tables,
and fleetingly imagined some might be
as hidebound as those thick black tomes.

But when I passed the closed door of the room
where they had just begun their Sunday service,
I heard one voice composed of many voices
soaring upon the unlimited spiritual sky,
the blissful, disembodied, voice of angels,
voice of neighbor, brother, friend and wife,
and knew the voice that waits within all voices —
the world that trembles, waiting to be born.