The Singing

I can hear her through

the thin wall, singing,

up before the sun:

two notes, a kind

of hushed half-breathing,

each time the baby

makes that little moan—

can hear her trying

not to sing, then singing

anyway, a thing so old

it might as well

be Hittite or Minoan,

and so soft no one

would ever guess

that I myself once

sang that very song:

back when my son

and then his brother

used to cry all night

or half the morning,

though nothing in all

the world was wrong.

And now how strange:

to be the man from next door,

listening, as the baby cries

then quiets, cries and quiets

each time she sings

their secret song,

that would sound the same ten

thousand years ago,

and has no

meaning but to calm.

Copyright Credit: Poem copyright ©2015 by Patrick Phillips, “The Singing,” from Elegy for a Broken Machine, (Alfred A. Knopf, 2015). Poem reprinted by permission of Patrick Phillips and the publisher.