But If I Could Summon

Jack Starobin

—30th Street, November 2023 

You sing a different kind of song
When you know the cost of staying
Quiet, right? In a train station
Or some other waypoint
Wrought with the thousands
Of departures that brought us
Here, someone like you taught me
How we keep the rumble they leave
Us. You can’t hear it by looking
Back, by mourning the dead
Or studying the unblinking
Stills they managed to suspend
In picture frames or pages before
They vanished like the echoes
We are. You can clutch a silence
Forever; you can’t hear by looking
Back. But if I could summon
Some semblance of a voice
That went before me, I imagine
I would hold that note
Like a friend I thought was gone.
There would be nothing to do
But sing and refuse to leave
Anything unsaid. The truth is
I am no conjuror, I bring back
No one, but I know what it means
To leave too soon, and it feels
A lot like falling quiet. I imagine
What the world would sound like
If people had shut down every train
Station when soldiers were shutting us
In box cars, how many more of us
Would be here, filling every chamber
With reverberation. I look around
At our candles and our museums
And recognize so many of us are still
Looking for that sound, some way
Someone might speak through pages
Or flames or picture frames or recipes.
Is that not why we pass on names,
In our tradition, of people who have died?
To never miss a chance for life to summon
Life? So when I see soldiers coming down
With ballistics built like box cars, taking
People away, I see them taking us. I ask,
What am I to do when I feel my waypoint
Rumble with the threat of silence?
And the words come to me like a train
On time, or a song I know well enough
To sing in this name that once was yours—
Not in mine. Not in mine. Not in mine.

Jack Starobin (he/they) is a senior at the University of Pennsylvania and a member of the Excelano Project, a spoken word poetry collective. His work has been published in Eunoia Review.