BELLS

THE Mohammedans say that the sound of bells
especially big ones, is obscene.

That hard clapper striking in a hard mouth
and resounding after with a long hiss of insistence is obscene.

Yet bells call the Christians to God
especially clapper bells, hard tongues wagging in hard mouths,
metal hitting on metal, to enforce our attention,
and bring us to God.

The soft thudding of drums
of finger or fist or soft-skinned sticks upon the stretched
membrane of sound
sends summons in the old hollows of the sun.
And the accumulated splashing of a gong
where tissue plunges into bronze with wide wild circles of sound
and leaves off,
belongs to the bamboo thicket, and the drake in the air flying past.

And the sound of a blast through the sea-curved core of a shell
when a black priest blows on a conch,
and the dawn cry from a minaret, God is great,
and the calling of the old Red Indian high on the pueblo roof
whose voice flies on, calling like a swan
singing between the sun and the marsh,
on and on, like a dark-faced bird singing alone
singing to the men below, the fellow-tribesmen
who go by without pausing, soft-foot, without listening, yet
they hear:
there are other ways of summons, crying: Listen! Listen!
Come near!