The Entire Verse Remains Obscure

With no tent, on a bedroll
With stars instead of canvas
For a ceiling, one of those

Lucky nights even you had,
Mostly alone with the world,
Wouldn’t it have alarmed you

If a melody drifted
In on a whistle, a voice,
A flute that sounded like bones,

Like a skeleton singing
Something soothing to itself?
And you’re so used to music,

Recorded, floating around,
Someone’s far-off radio,
A live concert miles away.

If you were from an era
When music was animal
Or social around a hearth,

Anything disembodied
When you were out in the night
Would have been truly spooky.

That’s literacy’s music,
The melody of small hours
Whispering like a beetle

Or a ghost between the lines,
The compressed obscurity
Of a text you almost get

From a people long since dead
That might have been clear to them
But to you sounds menacing.