Cliff pulled up two more chairs to our circle, Fergel grabbed a few more rocks glasses. John explained what we were up to: recite a poem, read a bit from the Rubaiyat or another poem from one of the other books that were laying around, tell a joke, sing a song, whatever. Without hesitation, they said they were in.

I started off by reciting one of my favorite stanzas from Khayyam, the most commonly quoted of the bunch:

“The Moving Finger writes; and having writ / Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit / Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, / Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.”

As I finished Darlene reached out to take the book. I gave it to her as John quoted his favorite lines from MacBeth. Cliff told a joke. Fergel slipped out when it was his turn and gave us a buy-back round. Next up was Darlene and she opened the Rubaiyat, but she didn’t read – she sang.

It wasn’t the voice of an angel – at least not one before the fall. It was smoky, dark, sensual, jazzy, erotic – somewhere in the world between Etta and Ella. And it was utterly absorbing. This woman was a pro.

She sang slow and low, spreading the vowels and rounding the consonants, making it her own story:

“You know… my Friends, with what a brave Carouse / I made a second marriage in my House; / Divorced old barren Reason from my Bed / And took the Daughter of the Vine to Spouse.”

She sang with a touch of taunt in her inflection, teasing and tempting her boys:

“Come…, fill your cup in the fires of Spring / Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling: / The Bird of Time has but a little way / To flutter – and the Bird is on the Wing.”

She sang like your lover’s breath on the pillow:

“A Book of Verse underneath the Bough, / A jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread – and Thou / Beside me singing… in the Wilderness –  / Oh, Wilderness… were Paradise… en’ow!

And she kept singing. Maybe it was 20 minutes. Maybe less. Maybe time stopped as she caressed and comforted words first written in Persian by a Sufi Mystic almost 1000 years ago and translated by a British romantic in the middle of the 19th century. And in that time outside of time she brought us all into that safe, warm place that was something more than a bar on 14th Street in the middle of a 100 year storm. And as she did, she unlocked for us that last clasp that held us to our New Yorkness, releasing us into ourselves and one another. Only six human beings, out of the whole six billion of us, were there that evening, but somehow we shared a universal secret about the vibration of common love. And the secret is this: unity lives always underneath the angst and activity we misunderstand as reason and propriety. Always, between the flashes in the sky that show us the magic, it’s there. And here it was, in a woman’s voice. In a lullaby. Nothing more. Nothing less. We were at peace. We were one.

She finished to tears and in tears. She finished in silence and to silence. She finished her incantation of Khayyam and I knew I’d never hear that poem in another voice for the rest of my days. I wish you all were there. Maybe you were, somehow.

She handed the Rubaiyat back to me, and said, “I love that book.” Or maybe it was, “I love you, Mick.”

At the moment they meant the same thing. All words meant the same thing. Everything was holy. Everything was a miracle. Everything was white.

Her friend looked out the big picture window at the front of the bar and said, with the finality of ritual, the benediction that ends the baptism, “Look, baby. It stopped snowin’.”

And it had. And within an hour the spirit of the day was beginning to dissipate and dissolve into the illusion of separation that we perceive as life. But someday the cumulous will meet the cold front, and it will all start again – the falling, the praying, the resting, the playing, the singing, the tears and the visions. Our job, and one I do poorly, rushing like a fool down cobblestoned streets, failing to see the mountains for the madness, is to keep the hint of her song alive until the next big storm takes us by the wrist and, once again, slows us down.

Epilogue:

I just saw a facebook posting from a friend and former colleague back in Brooklyn. He wrote that the news was reporting “between 12 and 16 inches for tomorrow.” Matt’s still teaching social studies up that way, and for him and for Darlene and for the rest of the children of New York, I’ll be praying tonight that you’ll wake up to a blanketing of white deep enough to make a difference.

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