'If art's acceptable evidence, mustn't what lies behind the world be at least as beautiful as the human voice?' - Mark Doty

". . . Here were people I saw every week at the post office, or the grocery store going about heir daily tasks and suddenly there they were in a different space in a new role and they opened their mouths and out poured all this glory. . . 

There's something about this experience, collectively, that makes it more powerful. We understand that we're not just by ourselves experiencing this sense of being uplifted but that we do that communally and that our fellows' voices do that for us. We are citizens together in that moment - a moment of a kind of rapture. . . " Mark Doty

MESSIAH (Christmas Portions)

   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.

MARK DOTY