​​In his heart
Stravinsky feared your dark precision
Called you ‘the Swiss clockmaker’
 
They listened
And hearing the jewelled perfection
Caught only the mirrors fractured flaw:
‘the child is heartless’
Unable to swell
with a surfeit of masculine fire
(they said the same of Britten)
 
And yet
Within the eclogue of perfection
‘saying what you mean’
you magnified the lost enchantment:
as “a time there was …
before the birth of consciousness
when all went well”
 
So Mother Goose tends us all
With the radiant benediction
Of prince and princess
Reunited beyond the thicket
Of caged human desire.
Perrault-like in your fashions
You make us laugh and sigh
When Beauty and the Beast
Dialogue their fundamental differentials
 
Hence gnomic men with giant heads
May dream of passion spent –
“the disease of feeling germed” –
enfolded in arms
that brace the pain and sweet regret
 
Here fairy tales are darkly meant
And dreams confound
In patterns of success
The tear that falls upon the page
And mirror hard
The dark intent
To show the aching heart
Distilled like the strongest scent
And streaked across the treble clef
Forensically, the mirror cracked
Slowly, with neurological disorder
As your ghost travelled amongst the dead languages
Creating Cecilia’s blessed imaginings
All hieroglyphics useless
 
Kinetics and paralysis imprisoned your mind
But in the forest
In the garden
The terrorised held you close
As the little boy remembered pain
And salved his lips on the wounded flesh
That animals endure
 
Bathed in moonlight
The boy beast became a prince
And sang his notes unto the air
Cool, clear
Perfumed by the night and its orderly frisson
 
Deep in paradise
Bittersweet harmonies
Grew their tendrils round his broken head
And warmed his soul with deep respect
Luxe, calme, et voluptè – before life and after
 
 
 
 
Gar Jones – October 2010
 

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