Читать книгу Tula - Chris Santiago - Страница 13

Notation

Her singing—sight-reading—while we

were supposed to be sleeping.

Dad downtown in a tower

& thrum of the graveyard shift.

Her piano: even pianissimo

throbbed the snow-muffled rambler.

Hymns that taught what the word is: a spell

for collapsing distances. And folk songs,

her forte, a rep rehearsed for classmates

who sometimes passed through:

they’d belt them out together,

flower prints crowding the upright.

Afterward cackling in her language:

uncrackable, although I thought I caught

the upshot: why here, in this white cold

& quiet? As if winter could cure a childhood

of cholera & typhoons. Her hand:

she transcribed my favorite melodies

as capitals on scrap paper. I hadn’t learned

notation, but the keys I could solve, a code

checked against the ear. My brother too

& the cousins who came for holidays,

some of them born in Manila:

I asked them all to string

songs into letters, caravans

braving the whiteout. Everyone played;

some even understood Tagalog.

Later not one of us could speak.