Ode to the Duduk
Peter Balakian

It’s not the wind I hear driving south

through the Catskills—it’s just bad news from the radio

and then a hailstorm morphs into sunlight

—look up and there’s—

an archipelago of starlings trailing some clouds—

But how does the wind come through you

primordial hollow—unflattened double reed—

so even now when bad news comes with the evening report—

I can press a button on the dashboard and hear your breath implode

the way wind blows through the slit windows of a church in Dilijan,

then a space in my head fills with a sound that rises from red clay dust

         roads

and slides through your raspy apricot wood—

Hiss of tires, wet tarmac, straw white lines

night coming like wet dissolve to pixilation—

Praise to the glottal stop of every hoarse whisper, every sodden tree

which speaks through your hollow carved wood—

so we can hear the air flow over starlings rising and dipping as 

         the mountain glaze the sun—

so we can hear the bad news kiss the wind through your whetted reed—