November: Two girls singing

It neither was the words nor yet the tune.
Any tune would have done and any words.
Any listener or no listener at all.
As nightingales in rocks or a child crooning
in its own world of strange awakening,
or larks for no reason but themselves

So on the bus through late November running,
by yellow lights tormented, darkness falling,
the two girls sang for miles and miles together
and it wasn’t the words or tune. It was the singing.
It was the human sweetness in that yellow,
the unpredicted voices of our kind.

Iain Crichton Smith