(If you are looking for just the haiku - scroll down to the bottom.)   

Ok - here it is, we're doing "Who said that?" week.  In which I take a line, from a favorite author or just from the universe, and form a haiku around it.  For today it's a line from Godric, a novel by Frederick Buechner.  Godric is a hermit who remembers his life as kind of a "traveling monk accompanier" I think.  Haven't really read all the book - parts of it in the daily Buechner email. 

 So - ALL THOSE YEARS ago Tom Ball blessed my ears to hear the poor cry out for help, and I still hear them right enough. I hear them when the mouse squeals in the owl's cruel claw. I hear them when the famished wolf howls hunger at the moon. I hear them when old Wear goes rattling past in weariness, and in the keening of the wind, and when the rain beats hollow on my roof. In all such sounds I hear the poor folk's bitter need and in the dimtongued silence too. But when melody wells up in thrushes' throats, and bees buzz honeysong, and rock and river clap like hands in summer sun, then misery's drowned in minstrelsy, and Godric's glad in spite of all.

It's the line "misery's drowned in minstrelsy"  - and you have to say "mis-ery" in 2 syllables!  I love that line - the only other place where I've encountered the word "minstrelsy" is in Gordon Lightfoot's song Minstrel of the Dawn - "If you meet him you must be a victim of his minstrelsy" 

 So here we go -

 

Sorrow's silence, then

misery's drowned in minstrelsy -

     Music of the night   (comes easily to mind)

     Music of nature   (fits more with original text)

    Music of the world

     Music of God's love

     God's musical love.

    The music of grace.

     The music of life.

    Nature's old sweet song.

Yeah - I like that last one best. 

Sorrow's silence, then

misery's drowned in minstrelsy -

    Nature's old sweet song.