Crying Over Callas

Your voice, expressing the highs and lows
the limits of human pleasure and pain
in this our earthly existence

Your voice, rich and vibrant, warm, nuanced,
complex, multi-layered
screechy in the modern medium of compact disc
I grieve for those who know you only through that medium
I grieve for myself, never hearing you sing in person

Your voice always makes me cry.
Joy and loss in full measure, telescoped together,
floating forth from vinyl

Sagan could have sent you alone on Voyager
sole and complete expression
of humanity’s gifts and sorrows

My body knows first, before my brain.
Is that Callas singing?
If I’m crying, it is she.

Please check out my special favorites: #2 at 10:50 – Carmen, Act I, Scene 5: “L’amour est un oiseau rebelle” (Bizet); and #9  at 41:17 – Orfeo ed Euridice, Act III, Scene 1: “J’ai perdu mon Eurydice” (Gluck)