In this operatic hall of the airwaves
One lone voice
Cracks the wall of silence
Overcome (his bravos premature)
But silence
Tethered by a stronger force
Hushes the intruder
As the dying strings
Float singer and song
Beyond the cresting firmament.
The communal at work
Until dying there on stage
The author releases us all
And we, the audience
Erupt into shared applause
Volcanic in its thrust.
A Verdian audience captured for posterity
Forgetting almost to breathe
Floating within and above
Each operatic encounter.
The Greeks surely understood this frisson
The power to marvel
To move beyond ourselves
Anchored with the retelling
Floating as one
In this salt sea of remembrance.
We watch, we wait
“Do no abandon me”
She cries aloud
Her prayer soon echoed by the monks
And we the listening ones
Joined across time and space
Cry back in our own surrender
Never! Never!
Save her
Bear her suffering on high.
We are willfully stirred
Alive to each moment
A vital audience
In this temple of the imagined.
Now alone
In my silent room
I ponder this tactile realm
Of long ago sounds.
Strange that this now fading technology
The shining CD in its jewel case
Stirs both memory and desire
For all these old communal ways:
How the past disrupts
Relapsing on the weak memory our digital age.
Sustained listening
Was once a prized bequest.
It flickers into obscurity
Draped in the deepest ritual
Arcane and alive
Like the black and white beauty of cinema’s youth.
O Rimembranza!
Gar Jones – February 2014
One lone voice
Cracks the wall of silence
Overcome (his bravos premature)
But silence
Tethered by a stronger force
Hushes the intruder
As the dying strings
Float singer and song
Beyond the cresting firmament.
The communal at work
Until dying there on stage
The author releases us all
And we, the audience
Erupt into shared applause
Volcanic in its thrust.
A Verdian audience captured for posterity
Forgetting almost to breathe
Floating within and above
Each operatic encounter.
The Greeks surely understood this frisson
The power to marvel
To move beyond ourselves
Anchored with the retelling
Floating as one
In this salt sea of remembrance.
We watch, we wait
“Do no abandon me”
She cries aloud
Her prayer soon echoed by the monks
And we the listening ones
Joined across time and space
Cry back in our own surrender
Never! Never!
Save her
Bear her suffering on high.
We are willfully stirred
Alive to each moment
A vital audience
In this temple of the imagined.
Now alone
In my silent room
I ponder this tactile realm
Of long ago sounds.
Strange that this now fading technology
The shining CD in its jewel case
Stirs both memory and desire
For all these old communal ways:
How the past disrupts
Relapsing on the weak memory our digital age.
Sustained listening
Was once a prized bequest.
It flickers into obscurity
Draped in the deepest ritual
Arcane and alive
Like the black and white beauty of cinema’s youth.
O Rimembranza!
Gar Jones – February 2014