The Sunday Poem: “Analog” by Susanna Schantz

December 13th, 2025

The Sunday Poem is published weekly, and strives to include the poet reading their work.

Susanna Schantz reads her poem at its conclusion.

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Tore Sætre, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Abdullah Ibrahim, 2016

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Analog

…………………after “Soweto is Where It’s At,” Abdullah Ibrahim and Ekaya
…………………Live at Sweet Basil, New York City, 1987

Sitting inches from your piano
I was struck
by how you ceded
the spotlight to the four winds,
let them explore their cardinal
directions, while you, self-effacingly,
brought the cry of the city
into being, sustained it through
this act of joy.

Afterwards, you reached deep
into your pocket—as if you
always carried a part of that city
with you—and handed me
the little box.

II.

I saw you at sunrise
as I came out of the subway,
you out of The Chelsea, huddled
against the chill of this city,
perhaps the public,
perhaps your own height.
I didn’t speak, not wanting
to be a burden.

But one day you met my eyes,
and smiled, recognizing by now
your co-conspirator in morning’s
early silence, just trying
to get to work
to coffee
to news, maybe from home,
in print.

I broke it, and reminded you
about what you had given me.
You told me that your mother,
in District 6, in another life,
another name, played the keyboard
in church, and I told you that my
mother, a world away, did too.

III.

Sitting, thirty-six years later, a different
city, so very far from your piano, the threat
of a southern summer deluge driving us
into the worst of acoustical worlds
for anything except the thump, the ping
of a basketball, there it was, still, your

trust, autumnal now, yielding the attention—
and most of the makeshift sound technology—
to a new band of juniors, while you
bowed out almost all together, as if
at peace that it would have required
an extraordinary feat of amplification
to hear you in that inhospitable place.

IV.

Back at home, the scent of sweet
basil in my garden, if no longer
on Seventh Avenue, I still know
where it’s at, still relish its
physicality, its imperfections,
the fact that it was passed from
one hand to another, still relish

the pop of opening
the dusty compartment,
the snap of putting it in,
the click of closing the door,
and hoping, hoping
it still works.

Listen to Susanna Schantz read her poem

The ancient cassette Abdullah Ibrahim gave Susanna Schantz that is referred to in her poem

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Susanna Schantz is a former teacher for NYC public schools, U.S. Department of Education TRIO programs, and the SC Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in La Piccioletta Barca, Syncopation Literary Journal, The Calendula Review, and VAN Magazine. The daughter of two musicians, she lives in South Carolina.

Listen to the 1975 recording of Dollar Brand (Abdullah Ibrahim) performing “Soweto is Where it’s At”