24 April 2012
Your ears perhaps heard some falls Mine could not. Some balances, Some subtleties; We heard the ripples of their fingers on the strings Echoing through every atom of every corner Under these arches of God.
I do not know you. Nor you I. Nor any of us in this frozen moment of zeal, Cascading from pages penned By an architect dead.
But I thought,
(And wondered if you thought)
That if the silence is infinite (and wondrous) Or finite (and defined),
There is no point to the songs, To the carvings To the glass To the prayers To the paint To the Sistine Chapel To the bricks To the abstinence And to the lives of builder-martyrs. To the wars. To the truces. To the calm before the death, The funeral formalities, To the debates on forever; To Reformation or salvation, to the burnings, to the robes, to the confessions or professions, to the splendour, to the collars, And to 'The Passion of the Christ'.
Humanity is an illusion of impulses. My eyes on your rapturous figure Only that.
And I don't mind. I don't know if you do, Face in the crowd.
Handel's Messiah- • Opuss № I