'Language, first and last'

 

 

“Poetry is, first and last, language - the rest is filler.” – Mark Strand

  

Born on Prince Edward Island in April of 1934, Strand became an American citizen and had a distinguished career as a poet, essayist and translator.  He died in 2014 at age 80.

 

Poet Laureate Consultant to the Library of Congress, he received the Wallace Stevens Award (given to "recognize outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry”) and numerous other major prizes, including a MacArthur “Genius” grant and the Pulitzer Prize for his book Blizzard of One.  For Saturday’s Poem, here is Strand’s,

 

The Everyday Enchantment of Music

 

A rough sound was polished until it became
a smoother sound, which was polished until
it became music.
Then the music was polished until
it became the memory of a night in Venice
when tears of the sea fell from the Bridge of Sighs,
which in turn was polished until it ceased
to be and in its place stood the empty home
of a heart in trouble.
Then suddenly there was sun and the music came back
and traffic was moving and off in the distance,
at the edge of the city, a long line of clouds appeared,
and there was thunder, which, however menacing,
would become music, and the memory of what happened after
Venice would begin, and what happened after the home
of the troubled heart broke in two would also begin.