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Morning Bells

That small hotel, Madrid, being pulled from sleep
by bells across the city, the first Mass:
not the Cathedral’s sonorous and deep
authority but notes like tinny glass
from churches, all commanding dusty squares
where everything is noticed, nothing goes
from sight, from gossiping (the kind that cares),
old women mapping daily to’s and fro’s.

Why have they stayed so memorable, those bells
from such an undistinguished holy day?
Is it their near-discordant chime, that tells
of ordinary endurance, in the way
in jangling air around them, swung and tossed,
they speak a timeless language, common ground?
Or is it a regret for something lost,
like ritual made visible in sound?

D.A. Prince

If you have any thoughts about this poem,  D.A. Prince would be pleased to hear them

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