Still Life by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Still Life

Page 219

Finn, leaning in: “Then we’re not witnesses to decay. We’re archivists of the unperformed. The chandelier mourns not what was lost, but what was never permitted to flicker. Susie, shall we begin the Lull and Bomb Vigil?”

Susie, nodding solemnly: “Yes. Silence first. Then memory. Let the vigil begin.”

They sit in silence. Gregory flickers once. Then twice. Then a third time, untranslated. The castle’s acoustics shift again, from echo to breath. A door opens somewhere, not with creak but with recognition.

The Sounds of Compliance

Sung in a minor key,preferably

by a chandelier named Gregory

Hello, old silence, my vague friend,

You’ve come to bore us once again.

Because a vision softly creeping

Was flagged for tone and sent for sweeping.

And the words that might have stirred the air

Were not declared—

They filed a form

In the sounds of compliance.

In empty halls I walked alone,

Past marble sighs and dial tones.

Beneath the glow of chandelier flicks,

I heard the whispers of old metrics.

When my ears were stabbed by the flash of a neon shrug,

I felt the tug—

Of sacred blur

In the sounds of compliance.

And in the castle light I saw