I am tired of 'the fine art of unhappiness'. - Denise Levertov

Then as he sang it was no longer sounds only that made the music: he spoke, and as no tree listens I listened, and language came into my roots out of the earth, into my bark out of the air, into the pores of my greenest shoots gently as dew and there was no word he sang but I knew its meaning.

To speak of sorrow
works upon it
moves it from its
crouched place barring
the way to and from the soul's hall — out in the light it
shows clear, whether
shrunken or known as
a giant wrath — discrete
at least, where before

its great shadow joined
the walls and roof and seemed
to uphold the hall like a beam.

Sometimes the mountain
is hidden from me in veils
of cloud, sometimes
I am hidden from the mountain
in veils of inattention, apathy, fatigue,
when I forget or refuse to go
down to the shore or a few yards
up the road, on a clear day,
to reconfirm
that witnessing presence.