My heart sped! Beats quickened,
intensified by sound,
rising and inspiring:
a duo sharing songs –
by reeded living breath,
by hammered vibrant strings –
in forms which forswore words
to throw off sentiment
and strip their meaning bare;
mere sequence graced by notes,
patterns based in number,
yet speaking to our souls.
The rivers run higher in the hour before dawn:
rushing pulses shaped into alternating streams
as the red-white long-haul contra-flows of business
are driven hot and oiled in hurtling packs of steel,
vacuum-wrapped and insulated, but still roaring
with the purpose of a generation’s power;
consuming all the world to keep our selves alive.
Delivering – whatever it may cost our young…
Once we were new and immediacy could guide us!
Now that quisling young intensity has passed
since consciousness began to tire; of holding on
like paint the sun has faded until it flaked away,
cover wrinkling into splits and decayed character;
of some older habits that have lingered past their time,
reminders that the past was smaller than the now –
although a film of settlement resists the change,
obscuring shallow detail, forgetting losses in translation
Except: at least, this has not disappeared –
it’s time to hand over / for others to renew…
Maintain the Advance! 