THE MUTE WOMAN'S SONGS
(for Caterina De Re)

I
One afternoon a woman came to the Sound Maps Room.

Mute since age five, she could only exchange glances with people, discourse in sign language with those who knew it,
and inscribe notes to others in her exquisite handwriting in the small ivory-papered book she always carried with her.

At night she had dreams of singing loudly, of calling out caressingly to a lover, of speaking fluently in many languages, of reading her poetry jubilantly in public to vast audiences…

II
The woman asked to speak to the Chief Librarian.

III
An appointment was given to her—all sensed the woman’s urgency—that same day.

The Chief Librarian and the woman sat on a marble bench in the garden of the Library of Maps.

As they spoke, they smelled the roses from the nearby Lake of the Heart.

“What can I do for you?”

It was, the woman felt, her last chance.

She voiced her thoughts, “Let me use the Sound Pencil.”

IV
The Chief Librarian hesitated, but only for a moment.

“Yes.”

V
The two women returned to the library, and the Chief Librarian opened the glass case for the first time since it had been installed and held out the Sound Pencil to the woman.

VI
The woman, her hand trembling, took the silver pencil and pointed it
toward her throat.

VII
The few people who happened to be in the Sound Maps Room that afternoon described later on how song after song reverberated through the space.

Songs of almost impossible beauty.

by Moira Roth
Written 8/31/01
[In the production of this text on October 8, 2001, at Suzanne Lacy’s studio in Oakland, Caterina De Re played the role of the Mute Woman and Nancy Mackay the Chief Librarian.]