A Note In A Sonata Poem by Asad Ali

A note in the sonata bears no right—
No charter to be understood,
No inheritance of selfhood,
No wings of will to unfurl mid-air,
No script, no shrine, no destiny carved.
It is, and in that being, is undone—
A breath that dwells within the hush
Of what has never dared to be.
It blooms not like a flower from soil,
But as thought blooms from the silence
That cradled it before the world awoke.
It is the slave of its own freedom,
Bound not by chains, but by the infinite—
As blue is bound to all that bears its hue,
Yet never names the sea or sky.
As light, devout and tireless,
Shall journey through ten thousand nights,
Only to vanish in the veil it summons—
The shadow born of its own embrace.
And when the ocean dreams itself a cloud,
A single droplet shall arise,
Seeking the high and sacred peaks
Where music first became divine—
To echo once again the silence
That dared to sing.
Asad Ali