Music Thing

How I long to paint the world as they do! Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Debussy, Rachmaninov How can it be that entire worlds unravel in my eyes At the single brush of the flute’s soliloquy on my ear Or the glorious fanfare of the orchestra’s tutti Or the crystal ringing echo on the cold dark keys? How can shifting regular wavelengths of varying amplitude Recreate the shimmering reflections in Monet’s Water Lilies Or the rattling rifles of the Russian Revolution Or the delicate lace dance of the swans in Swan Lake Or the whisper of pure liquid moonlight streaming through the windows? It will never be within my grasp, this magic they work Twelve notes divided by frequency spaces the twelfth root of two In measures of three, four, seven, eight simple, compound, irregular Rearranged into a one-page etude or a thirty-minute symphony A soli, a diminished seventh in the upper registers Passionate, fantastical, sparkling, blazing Breaking the bounds of imagination— How I wish I could shape sound into beauty, as they did! I wish I had music, But all I have are words. And words limit me to only that much A paradigm on paper made in ink A million-strong divine vocabulary Only showing, telling, implying by nuances— Nothing, next to the mind-blowing dimensions That the greatest composers wove Upon the strings and reeds and keys And burnt into the hearts of the world With Chains of beamed black circles On five evenly-spaced lines