Poems of Narad

On Chopin

The Mother spoke most intimately to me
Of Chopin's music heard in the inner planes
And on the listening ear his melodies
Resounded through those secret mystic lanes.

Dampened chords supporting a threadlike tone
That wandered evanescent in the air
Born from an oestrus of sorrow, a vast Alone,
Songs of happiness mixed with the heart's despair.

Melodies like dreams reluctant to flee
Tokens of tender sweetness love and loss,
Their images linger on the enraptured soul
Then drown in seas of terrifying force.

I attended the birth of worlds and galaxies
And stars in violent motion and arrest,
Sounds as of life created and destroyed
And moments of love his tortured hands caressed.

A joy that was born on a bed of naked pain
His music brooded in subtle atmospheres
Repeated in the corridors of our minds
Visions of loveliness tinged with the touch of tears.

Through the inconsolable tragedy of fate
The psychic broken, of succourunavailed,
By violent harmonies and life betrayed
The tenuous note dissolved, the instrument failed.

Though drowned in agony and buried by waves
His spirit's legacy ever shall remain,
Assailed by ocean's storms it soars again
To bring the solace of beauty to our pain

And music to stir from some profoundest deep
Touching chords of sympathy and grace
That weld our human lives to song's embrace
And stir the heart to wonder and to weep.

Written after attending a concert of Chopin's music in Paris, performed by Ivo Pogorelich.