Small Shouts by Lamplight

“The street-lamps burn amid the baleful glooms,
Amidst the soundless solitudes immense
Of ranged mansions dark and still as tombs.”

— James Thomson, “ The City of Dreadful Night” (1874)

All the dust in the world could not obscure the original grandeur of the place: archways fluted, fountains carved (murmurs from water yet trickling), ruelles and courtyards and parks, mews for ghost carriages, trees without leaves lining deserted arcades, well-ordered libraries unread, cafes without custom, all under moth-wings fluttering velvet, violet, gray cast crimson, blinking in and out of pallid yellow light from the street-lamps. Air sluggish with a subtle reek of inflammable fossils, hungry for drops and bubbles of sound, a gigantic bellows or bagpipe collapsed upon itself, desperate for dirigible-strength, rousing itself to echo when I step into the street, my shadow a wan comma on the nearest wall, as I signal to the moon, the goblin-sun enmeshed within werewolf constellations;– I hail the selves, my selves, entombed within the houses tall and dormant, my shout a cry that thuds to a whisper, a piano-hammer damped into nothingness, con sordini, by the ogre who rules here, the stroke of my words by my tongue absorbed like ink by a blotter, which still offers a photon of hope, as blotting-paper holds the form of the words, shade-glyphs upon parchment, so too the muted cry imprints upon the walls and turrets and eaves of the houses, seeps through the bricks and traves and beams, the faintest sound dripping into the dreams of the dreamers (entombed but not yet of the tomb), tiny streams to waken the smallest sound, granting grace to widening sound, to entice a sleeper to rouse;– myself awake, one of me, a boy like me, from the time when swans breathed fire, yawns (a noise!) within the walls of the house on the corner, and across the street, another dreamer opens his eyes, notes the lambency via window-pane, wonders when sunrise is scheduled, spits out the dust on his tongue, and calls hoarsely back to the man, the lone figure of the man, and his shadow on the pavement below.

Daniel A. Rabuzzi (he / his) has had two novels, five short stories, 30 poems, and nearly 50 essays / articles published (www.danielarabuzzi.com). He lived eight years in Norway, Germany and France. He earned degrees in the study of folklore & mythology and European history. He lives in New York City with his artistic partner & spouse, the woodcarver Deborah A. Mills (www.deborahmillswoodcarving.com).

A Song for Daniel