The Songs Of The Erinnyes (from The Songs Of The Erinnyes, Sonnets, Odes, and Elegies by Jay Noya, Brigantium Press)

1

I’ve come by to do a rain dance
It’s not the same as other times
Even when the repetitions are all too evident
And inevitable
But it’s an odd melody I’m hearing now
And it’s as a token of penance that I’m offering my services
As dramaturge of the invisible and hunter of the improbable
Mea culpa mea culpa mea maxima culpa
It’s a kind of relapse and slipping back
To the fundamentals of playing and singing
And watching the heavens for signs and indications
Lest I should ignore my own heart and listen
Or worse admit to myself that what others are saying
Matters more than what I’m thinking and seeing
And as one watches and prays for omens
With the fervor of the believer and the devout
The wind whistles
And the soul whistles
And the heart whistles
And I’ll whistle and dance and it’ll be a rain dance
Because once in an instant of obtuseness and zealotry
I contrived to see and convinced myself that I was seeing
Love in its bizarre incandescence and regenerative manifestations
Wedged among rusty old nails
Inside a battered and cracked tin can
It was the spontaneous sort of trick and antic
I excelled at and when it came to it
Managed without effort to coax others into allowing
That futility wasn’t either scientific or pragmatic
And whenever I saw the chance I spouted arguments
And fermented disagreements and discord
I also had the knack for thrilling and mystifying listeners
With bizarre explanations and wonderful incantations
Being always mindful of where my gaze drifted
The romance I insisted on was that circumscribed
By the large puddles of an abandoned and fenced lot
Overgrown with weeds and other rank vegetation in Staten Island
With views of the Manhattan skyline
And the upper bay in the background
It was a place I’d visited years back one September evening
It had been raining for a week and would rain for yet another
It was the type of place the Erinnyes haunted
After dusk the abandoned lot belonged to the rats and the Erinnyes
And the wind whistled
And the soul whistled
And the heart whistled



2

One checks one’s breath and stares
At what one has waited for and seen not often
But not infrequently and it’s this question
The same question that has persisted
It’s the same question that cleaves the heart
It’s irked and distracted me like a sore and it’s scarred me
It has marked me and left me defenseless
It is a tiresome type of recurring preoccupation
And somewhere along the way I have conceded to myself
That there’s scant little to be gained
From chasing and persisting on what has trounced me
Again and again one stares and waits burdened with the tedium
And irritation of waiting and guessing without knowing
That one’s wasting and depleting one’s years
One is forced to accept the sublimation and mystery
Of flesh decaying coupled with arithmetic
Give or take the movements of the moon and the sun
The result is years of traffic the result is birth and death
And all else in between the result is wonder and mayhem
The result is chaos and war and murder and penitence
And the whole gamut and glories and agonies
Wrapped and trapped in the skin and flesh and bones
Of the man smoking cigarettes in a doorway
Waiting for the thundershower to dwindle
And waiting he watches the procession of strangers
Under umbrellas running in all directions
Years and decades lapse and the waiting isn’t at an end
What’s one left to fall back on
But the labyrinths and the machinery of waiting
And the suspicions that there is something
To be gained and discovered and that there is something
Worthwhile waiting for in the doorways
Of Bayard Street and Mulberry and Mott streets?
The thread is of a tenuous variety as are the quarrels
The quarrels yes those endless evening quarrels
And bouts of morning shouting and deprecation
All of that shall be a memory
A faded and only partly comprehensible mark
The rain shall continue to fall and return to erase
And drag one day behind another
The rain shall fill the air with the songs of the Erinnyes
The years shall pass and one’s heart
Will be burdened with inexplicable sadness and loneliness
One shall still be lurking and taking cover in doorways
In the downtown netherworlds of Manhattan
Waiting and watching strangers flit by under umbrellas
And I at least shall be wandering what it is
That the strangers are taking away with them
And where it is that they’re going and for how long
And waiting in the dimness of a doorway
Tremulous with anger and loneliness I’ll be dreading
To have to relinquish my refuge and hiding post
But my turn (how can it not be?) is due
When I too shall take flight and go off
Go up the street under my own black umbrella
As the rain fills the air around me with the songs of the Erinnyes
And the wind whistles
And the soul whistles
And the heart whistles


© J.Noya 2006