The Sewer Song

The rich staccato of her footfalls resonates against the damp walls and rounded ceilings of the empty sewer system, a steady clip cliping, filling the silence with phantom footsteps that keep time with the strange, off – beat melody of her whistling. The melancholy sorra-so of her song is carried and duplicated many times over by the cold, leaden walls, echoing in a haunting sort of way that makes the silence around it seem expectant, as if waiting for some unknowable thing, some unforeseen spectacle known only to the spirits of stagnant waters. 

Clip clip, sorra-so, sorra-sweetness, clip clip,
Then silence, so sweetly the silence.

Always there is the drip drop of falling water, as one by one the droplets give in to gravity’s call and let go, to fall into the shallow pools below. Such a sound should be near inaudible, but gutter-ghosts let no music die, and thus expand each miniscule beat to the size of the universe, the death of each raindrop erupting in song.

Clip clip, sorra-so drip drop drip, sorra-sweetness, clip drip drop clip clip
Then silence, drip dropping on silence

Somewhere, hidden by a veil of musty darkness, a lost bird is singing to the wandering ghosts of the sewers, a lonely song with no memory of sunlight to brighten it, as cold and as dark as the cavernous tunnels that carry it. A wistful trilla-wey, trilla-wey, that mingles with the duplicated melody of Her whistling, joining in the ever – present song of the sewers. The anthem of the unseen that reside beneath the world, sung by the lost and forgotten, the ever-silent serenade of drifting stowaways.

Clip clip, trilla-wey drip drop drip sorra-so, clip trilla-wey drip drop sorra-sweetness, trilla-wey, 

Then silence, oh resonant silence,
Among stagnant waters,
The sewer song sounds.

-SilentSymphonies

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