Your fine-grained voice*
Pierces the void:
An unknown singer
From an unknown past
 
Sapho in invocation
Throbbing, shimmering
In phrases of pure petition.
 
I wait on every word
In a language I do not discourse
And catch my breath
 
That your thread of sound
Should end and break the spell
 
But then you swell the voice
In thrilling amplitude.
 
Real and intoxicating personnel
Decanted
From the lost art of French singing. 
 
A whole tradition
Of clarity and expressiveness
Of always telling a story.
  
The inflexion demanding
Landing
On an arc of frisson.
 
Then dying on the cylinder
As the scratches of reproduction
Supplant the fragrant void of your poesy.
 
Four minutes of recorded sound:
One voice
In an armoury of tradition
 
Heraldry of the vocal kind
In noble lines of declamation.
 
Is it the trace of Racine
That I hear
Vaulting across the centuries?
 
 
 
*Suzanne Cesbron-Viseur
Recorded 1929, Paris
​
Gar Jones:  February 2016

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