John Fuller: "Calling"

There, don't you hear it too?

Something is calling, although

The day is blank and gray.

The eye fastened on nothing,

The ear undistracted

And we with nothing to say.

But still that sense of calling,

Of something seeking attention

Beyond our consciousness.

That voice in voiceless things

When they cease to be themselves,

Losing their choice and purpose.

Joining the indiscriminate

Otherness which surrounds us

At our own times of withdrawal.

It is then that the world calls us

As if to reinterpret

Or to reconfigure.

Whose is this voice? A god's?

Surely not. It seems

To be the voice of duty

That speaks of origins

And of relationships

Between things grown apart.

And I remember the muezzin

Singing every morning

Raptly, as if for himself.

Singing in the dark hour

At a distance, over all,

And yet outside our door.

His practised lilt spoke more

Of the puzzles of night than of

The determinations of morning.

As though the light had still

To be charmed into being

And each day a reward.

The voice is much like his,

A commanding meditation

Rising from the blankness.

Of a sleeping senselessness,

Thoughtful, improbable,

But stirring us to beauty.

And like his, the voice

Links us for a while

In its reiterations

Then ends abruptly, as if

Distracted by something else

Of no great importance.

"Calling" by John Fuller. Text as published in Ghosts (Random House UK, 2004).

Art credit: "The Adhan: The Muslim Call to Prayer," video published on 07/09/2013 by interestmedia.