The Song That Ena Zizi Sang.

So here is Ena Zizi. She is seventy years old. The house fell Down on her when an earthquake hammered Port-au-Prince. She was there in the dark for a week, her leg and hip broken. In the beginning she talked to a man who was buried nearby. He was a priest, he said. After two days he fell silent so Ena Talked only to God, she said. After a week, she was rescued By a team called the Gophers. They slid her out on plywood. Ena sang all the way out of the rubble: she had begun to sing when she heard the scrabbling of the Mexicans’ search dogs. No one can remember if there were any words in the singing, But everyone remembers the lady singing. Ena says she does Not remember what song she was singing. I was very thirsty, She says. I sang and sang. Everyone there wept, and clapped, And they went back to work. But Ena is still singing the song. That’s what I wanted to tell you. You can’t not hear her song. I think perhaps that’s a song that once it gets born never ends. I think maybe there are more songs floating than we can hear. I think we all know that and we all get a little tired and forget. But look, here’s Ena rising from the dead again, and singing!

Brian Doyle, from A Shimmer of Something. Taken from Give Us This Day.

Brian Doyle, author of numerous award-winning books, “proems,” and essays, passed on in 2017.