The chorale, a poem by Rethabile Masilo
I have to tell you, the voice of God, if you really want to know, is Aretha Franklin.
�Marianne Faithfull
The power that lives in her voice has driven our freedom,
power made with sound, with a resonance getting closer
but never completely overwhelming, apart from the awareness
of how it is able to, like the deep-throated purr of a veldt cat
pawing at something near the centre, the way the pour of rain
hits tin roofs of houses near the bitter end of town, and, grows
as it approaches, held at bay by an invisible baton of physics
while the master conductor of a god spares us the unknown.
A choir, though robed in the colours of loss, lifts everybody
and with lilting tone keeps them there. Aretha sang to the world
like a chorale throughout, from season to season, from childhood
to the edges of reason, till abruptly from that source one day
came no more warmth, of the kind a soothing sound copies
from nature; what a baby hears for nine months until in birth
it has to come and face the world, black-clad notes that danced
out of its mother�s mouth now dead like her. Today the world
is born. I've come to a park near my home to let the birds know,
the same way a parent might hesitate into the children�s room
on the morning a partner has not woken up from disease.
The birds don�t care; I watch them hop and fly from twig to twig
like they know something I don�t, the thing being that as I turn
to leave the park I become increasingly more convinced
that wherever her voice is, these birds are singing with it.
(16 August 2018)
�Marianne Faithfull
The power that lives in her voice has driven our freedom,
power made with sound, with a resonance getting closer
but never completely overwhelming, apart from the awareness
of how it is able to, like the deep-throated purr of a veldt cat
pawing at something near the centre, the way the pour of rain
hits tin roofs of houses near the bitter end of town, and, grows
as it approaches, held at bay by an invisible baton of physics
while the master conductor of a god spares us the unknown.
A choir, though robed in the colours of loss, lifts everybody
and with lilting tone keeps them there. Aretha sang to the world
like a chorale throughout, from season to season, from childhood
to the edges of reason, till abruptly from that source one day
came no more warmth, of the kind a soothing sound copies
from nature; what a baby hears for nine months until in birth
it has to come and face the world, black-clad notes that danced
out of its mother�s mouth now dead like her. Today the world
is born. I've come to a park near my home to let the birds know,
the same way a parent might hesitate into the children�s room
on the morning a partner has not woken up from disease.
The birds don�t care; I watch them hop and fly from twig to twig
like they know something I don�t, the thing being that as I turn
to leave the park I become increasingly more convinced
that wherever her voice is, these birds are singing with it.
(16 August 2018)
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| Aretha Franklin (25 Mar 1942 � 16 Aug 2018) |
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