Now and Then Running Away

Sebald could do no better

Than to refer to the sound

Of a small, quicksilver stream

As proverbial babble,

As his translator has it

In English. It pauses you.

What is it about stream sounds

That dulls the machinery

Of likenesses in the mind?

Murmuring or whispering,

Chuckling, gurgling, or babbling,

Streams are given human sounds

On the verge of semantics,

Half conspiratorial,

Not quite conversational,

Mostly intimate, private.

And such small variety!

The metaphors for the moon,

For the clouds, for the forests,

Have range, try out surprises,

But for the sound of a stream,

The haul of comparisons

Are this handful of minor

Human vocalizations.

There’s a straining, listening.

Streams seem to have what Frost called

The sound of sense, but not sense.

That way, they’re a kind of verse,

An overheard prosody

In unknowable language.

Is this the best you can do?

The continuous sound waves

Moving air around water

That’s been coursing over rocks—

Can’t you see the motion there,

Feel the flicker on your skin?

There’s no one talking here, least

Of all the cascading wet.

It’s not communication

Nearing the lip of meaning.

What you’re hearing are escapes,

The confusions of release.