The Music Man
An old man sits by the street corner
Cradling an old guitar in his weathered hands
His calloused fingertips skim over the strings
His leathery palms cup its wooden base
Between the two, man and instrument
I cannot tell which one is older.
His eyes are closed in reflection
His guitar is silent in anticipation
Meanwhile, the world waits in silence
Birds soar in the sky
The leaves whisper in the wind
And the people keep rushing by.
And then he plays
His fingers race over the frets
The guitar vibrates rebelliously
He hums
It thrums
Between the two I cannot tell
Which one is in charge of the music.
The music!
It stops the pulsation of my heart
It burns the deepest corners of my soul
It breaks the barriers within
And shatters the silence without
Earth is trapped in a sphere of symphonies
Life is paused in a glass of rhapsody
All is well within that moment of eternity
While he plays.
His voice is deep and rich
His tune is strong and thick
His heart is bleeding through the notes
His life is breaking amidst the tones
And I am pulled along
Breaking and bleeding with his song.
And then he stops.
The spell is undone.
All is as it was.
Nothing outside the ordinary
And once again he is an old man
Seated by the corner
Cradling a guitar
(Which one, I wonder, is older?)
His eyes are closed in reflection
His guitar is silent in satisfaction
The birds still soar in the sky
Silence hushes the rustling leaves
And the people keep rushing by.
Susan Piwang, first winner BNPA, 2012, under the theme, Music. She won 500 USD and autographed copies of poetry by prolific African poets, Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Adichie Ngozi, Tropical Fish by Doreen Baingana and Fables out of Nyanja by Bwesigye bwa Mwesigire. She also attended the Storymoja Festival in Nairobi. The first Ugandan poets to ever attend the Stoymoja Festival were Babishai poets.