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Unread 05-11-2022, 06:22 PM
John Isbell John Isbell is offline
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Join Date: Mar 2017
Location: TX
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A very mysterious poem! I think you've captured the Breton coast nicely. Is that a Debussy piece I don't know? And I wonder if you have spires in two syllables.
I've not dug out my old Debussy poem - the last one was what I wrote yesterday thinking about it. Also, Gilbert and Sullivan are great.
Here meanwhile is a somewhat jagged piece that opens my Concerto for the Left Hand MS., with accompanying plainchant:


Plainchant


Tonight, the Moon is full, and Easter now
is a bare month away. The land is hard
as yet beneath the foot, and winter’s hold
on Indiana has not loosened up.

The day has yet to redden in the East.
Above these voices stand the watching skies
in their array, the planets on the move.
The words wash through my soul as if it were

some yet untraveled country, where the mode
does not conform to holiness. My heart
and mind dance in this Latin – my eyes close.
The round of year and hour resolves itself

into a scheme of measure, key, and octave.
And dawn is coming now. The monks have sung
their offices. Another day is come.
Have I been changed in hearing, much the way

a foot can change a threshold in the slow
drift of the centuries? And will the heart
in its career find access for this art
designed for Heaven on the Earth below?


And the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fi5CZ3lTXP8