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Agios Agios Agios Gregorian Liturgy (Fr. Antonious Tanious)

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The sounds
Of the Harlem night
Drop one by one into stillness.
The last player-piano is closed. 
The last victrola ceases with the
“Jazz Boy Blues.”

The last crying baby sleeps
And the night - becomes
Still _ as a whispering heartbeat.
I toss _
Without rest in the darkness,
Weary as the tired night,
My soul
Empty as the silence,
Empty with a vague,
Aching emptiness,
Desiring
Needing someone,
Something.

I toss without rest
In the darkness
Until the new dawn
Wan and pale,
Descends like a white mist
Into the court-yard.

————————————
It is a summer night. So - warm, even hot, perhaps oppressive, people staying up late, and at last there comes quiet, stillness, like a whispering heart beat. Life continues, if only just. But the writer cannot sleep; he tosses restlessly, weary as the tired night itself. His soul is as empty as this silence of the shutdown summer night. It is an emptiness however that contains an ache, which is vague, unclear, but somehow to do with need and desire. He has the ‘Jazz Boy Blues’. 

The shorter second verse repeats a line from the first: ‘I toss without rest in the darkness’. And now this restless tossing - feeling unsettled, uncertain, unfulfilled - leads into the ‘new dawn’. But it is an unpromising dawn: ‘wan and pale’ - suggesting illness, exhaustion, weakness, lacking enthusiasm, energy. The night has not revived his energy. The new dawn ‘descends’ - not ascends - ‘like a white mist’ ‘into the court-yard’. A mist obscures vision and clarity. Nothing seems solid and real. And there is no energy in this dawn to create something new and vibrant. There is the contrast of night and day, of darkness and pale/white, perhaps referencing the racial prejudices of the period. Perhaps also referencing some divide in the writer’s mind/soul/body between the desire for someone to love and their absence. 

Interestingly, significantly perhaps, the poem ends in the ‘court-yard’ - a word that juxtaposes high and low (crown and commoner); and perhaps also ‘courting/love’ with ‘yard’, which in America could mean a garden or money (100 dollars). ‘Garden’ sounds positive, but ‘money’ less so.

The white mist descends into and fills this courtyard. If ‘white’ is intended derogatorily, oppressively, then ‘love’ seems a long way away. There is no redeeming feature in the writer’s mood: he has the Jazz Boy Blues.

Agios Agios Agios Gregorian Liturgy (Fr. Antonious Tanious)

kirollos G.

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