Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, AFTER THE SYMPHONY, by CALE YOUNG RICE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

AFTER THE SYMPHONY, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: The last finale had crashed
Last Line: Then slow sleep muted all to oblivion.
Subject(s): Grief; Happiness; Music & Musicians; Musical Instruments; Youth; Sorrow; Sadness; Joy; Delight


The last finale had crashed,
A surging shower of irridescent vibrance;
And as the musicians sighed and rose
To drift away into the night,
Their tired instruments, glinting no longer,
Catching no longer enchanted rhythms
Into their breasts of wood and brass,
Were laid away in case and cover,
Hushed.
The violins slept;
With rhythm dreams flitting along their fibres.
The flute with an aria lingering yet at its vents,
Like a disembodied soul at earthly haunts,
Lay still;
And still lay the clarinet and sad oboe
In the leathern dark that swathed them.
Then I heard speaking,
Started, I think, by a viola:
'How much Beethoven has said in his Fifth!
Had he but told us a little more
The meaning of all life's haunting Minors
Would surely be open to us!'
A piccolo sighed, 'Perhaps.'
To which a cello mourned reply,
No; you forget Tchaikowsky!
Chords cannot plumb the ultimate meaning of sorrow.
The "Pathetique" is proof that grief and wrong
Are discord-atoms, element-powers,
That enter all being darkly.
Resolve them away, we may,
Ever into the Major,
But ever, as mists to moors, they return
Blindly, to brew their bane.
Meanings are but illusions that vanish,
Mysteries only abide!'

'Then,' said a blunt bass-viol,
'Illusions are better, though briefer!
Bach, with his bounding clarity for me!
The strong crisp creed of a fugue,
Free of all doubtings, achings, searchings,
Sure at last of completion!'

'And of immortality too?' asked the oboe,
With reedy quaver.
'Would indeed it were so!
Would we could round life off
To a circle of completion!'

'But since we cannot,' rang a horn,
'For wishes are not wonders,
Why do we whine of meaning and mystery?
What do these matter? Power is all!
Strength to shout to the heavens
That we are masters of them
As long as we breathe of earth.
For Death and the dead are equals -- both are dead!'

From the drums a volley echoed, 'Both are dead!'
Whereon was hushing, but not ceasing;
No more peace or ceasing
Than follows the rattle of clods on a coffin.
For all waited the word of their leader, the violin,
Whose voice is ever reverberant
Of the hope and despair of the world.

And softly it began . . .
As if the thronging memories
Of a thousand symphonies stirred it:
Of allegros that ran like youth
Before slow-aging adagios;
Of scherzos that dissolved in the arms
Of funeral strains, to be borne away
On the solemn hearse of silence:
Softly it began . . .
'We play but ill, comrades,
And blind to the score's beauty,
Else neither meaning nor mystery
Would overmuch trouble us.
Great joy can only come to the griever,
Great grief to the rejoicer.
So only they who are resonant
With both, and who sound harmonies
That waken harmonics infinite,
Only they play well!
Be the clef what it may then,
Be the time brave or broken,
There is a rhythm always
Of mingled Major and Minor
For those with souls to seize it!'

An interval followed
Of silvery murmured assent:
Not even the blare-begetting horn broke it.
Then slow sleep muted all to oblivion.





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