When Language Becomes a Lyric

Sometimes you read bit of prose and it immediately suggests a lyric. Music isn't far from plain language, and sometimes they can get very close. Even the tempo is suggested by the density of the words.

Here is an example from a piece from David Whyte's Consolations:

The Pilgrim Edge

Walking the pilgrim edge
holding them together
is the hardest place to stay

to breathe of both
to make a world of both
to be active in their exchange

our need to be needed
our wish to be seen
our need for help and succor

living in a world of luminosity
subject to the wind and the weather
surrounded by the music of existence
able to be found
by the living world

to respond to its call when needed
a rehearsal in fact for the act of dying
a place where inside and outside
reverse and flow with no fixed form