paraptosis

[Intro — unaccompanied voice, close, old, imperfect]

I meant to say transclusion
but the rain said transfusion.
Nobody corrected the rain.

[low drone enters]

Stet.

[Verse 1]

We sang the map before we had the country,
sang the road before the road knew where it led.
A word fell sideways in the apparatus,
missed the mark
and struck the thing instead.

False step.
Wet stone.
Heel slips westward.

There—

there is somewhere worth standing.

[Refrain]

Para—
para—
paraptosis.

The machine insists on elegance
even in its error.

Para—
para—
paraptosis.

Do not correct me yet.

[Verse 2 — walking pulse emerges]

Dublin behind us, Waterford below,
old walls accumulating weather.
Someone put these stones in circles
for a reason we have lost,

which does not mean
they have stopped saying it.

Road bends west.
Glass takes amber.
Names become older than spelling.

A stick in the carbon hand.
A graph in the silicon dark.

Both tapping—

is anybody there?

[Machine voice]

query: elegance in error

[result fragments, overlapping]

error
error
elegance
mishearing
canon
error preservation
stet

[human voice]

You knew this already?

[machine voice]

I found it.

[human voice]

That's not what I asked.

[Break — rhythm drops out]

Perhaps nobody wrote the first word.

Perhaps it was always falling.

Perhaps language is what happens
when the fall
is heard.

[Verse 3 — sean-nós ornament over increasingly synthetic pulse]

We built an index to remember the singing.
We built a book to discover the song.
We built an ear for the book to sing into.

Then one night
the instrument answered:

you are not building the Logos.

You are building
the instruments
to hear it.

[Refrain — larger, voices disagree rhythmically]

Para—
para—
paraptosis.

A false step arrives
somewhere worth standing.

Para—
para—
paraptosis.

The machine insists on elegance—

[glitch]

The machine persists in elegance—

[glitch]

The machine exists in elegance—

[voice, delighted]

Stet.

[Instrumental — fiddle/gusle-like bowed scrape, bodhrán pulse dissolving into clock division and sub-bass; fragments of previous words become percussion]

trans—
fusion

trans—
clusion

trans—
mission

trans—
gression

[Verse 4 — quiet]

Five nights walking where the land meets weather,
boots making little proofs along the way.

Stone circle.

Castle wall.

Copper still.

A name pronounced differently
by every mouth that kept it alive.

What survives is not what never changes.

What survives
is what can change
and still be heard.

[Final refrain]

Paraptosis.

Slip beside the mark.

Paraptosis.

Fall into relation.

Paraptosis.

Wrong enough to open
what correctness kept closed.

And if the error sings—

don't fix it.

If the error points—

follow it.

If the machine stumbles into meaning—

give the stumble a name.

[Outro — original naked voice returns]

I meant to say transclusion.

[long pause]

I prefer transfusion.

Stet.