Non Confundar

This waiter was not born when last I came
In here with student activist or present wife.
The bread seems somewhat lighter, with no oil
But butter to be smeared with, not dipped in;
The menu is the same except for price.

The music, on the other hand, throbs more,
Demands a dancer, finds but thrusting blood,
Blood which has learned to throb, having beheld
As well as heard, and been posessed,
If only in my measure, for a time.

Between unfinished towers, silent, dark,
The Protestant cathedral settles down
Above the precincts of the destitute,
The hideous sky of national flags unseen.

The Philharmonic has gone home to rest,
Leaving perhaps some fugitive echo
Of Bayreuth tuba in the limestone grove
And cryptic chambers of the beating heart.

Most worshipful grand master architect
Who calculated the exact ground bass
Of which my passion is an overtone,
You paused in your conservatory lecturing
When bells rang out the angelus, to pray:

I, who sit here eating broiled cheese,
Require intercession, so that
I may be assimilated to those harmonies,
All passion sublimated, like the horns
That rise above the strings in tremulo,
While deeper horns, unknown to father Bach
Prepare themselves to bind all pain to peace.

Written Memorial Day 2001; Posted here in memory of Anton Bruckner, born on this date in 1824.

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© 2001 by F.P. Purcell; all rights reserved.