What if you paired poetry and music? (Yes, you say, a song already is poetry.) I mean paired a poem with music. Not in the sense that the poem becomes the lyrics. More in the way that a cello, which sounds like a human voice to me on some level, creates space for a poem to reside, to open up, to live.

Daniel Sperry plays such a cello, and reads such a poem. Along with a few other instruments, here is the poetry of William Stafford.

A Story That Could Be True

If you were exchanged in the cradle and
your real mother died
without ever telling you the story
then no one knows your name,
and somewhere in the world
your father is lost and needs you
but you are far away.

He can never find
how true you are, how ready.
When the great wind comes
and the robberies of the rain
you stand on the corner shivering.
The people who go by —
you wonder at their calm.

They miss the whisper that runs
any day in your mind,
“Who are you really, wanderer?”
and the answer you have to give
no matter how dark and cold
the world around you is:
“Maybe I’m a king.”

–William Stafford

See more spoken word poetry and music from Daniel Sperry

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Photo by nosha, Creative Commons license via Flickr. Performance by Daniel Sperry.