Meanwhile, Here in Boston

They’ll eat their words with a fork and spoon.
— The Beach Boys “Catch a Wave.”
I can’t give it away on Seventh Avenue.
— Mick Jagger “Shattered.”
One never knows, do one?
— Fats Waller

Last night we had our periodic Triad meeting, planning how we might prepare to present a concert this November. The unusual times call for creative solutions.  The program we had originally planned for Spring of this year was dubbed I’ll Make a Harp of Disaster, a theme poignant in its prescience.  The piece of mine which was originally on the docket is Annabel Lee, which will not serve well for the present exigencies.  So tonight I was inspired to compose two short new pieces suited to the atypical preparation cycle of this year:  One on a text of Leo Schulte, “A Bell”:

A bell-free Life, 

Where the Harps of Time are never strung,

And the Chords of Gray are never strummed,

Where the ringing, snowing Crows

And the chiming, drowning Sounds 

Of a lost Earth ascending

Are stilled.

Your languishing Faith, Aurelia,

Your increasing Doubt, Aurelius,

Flourishing and anguishing Arcadia,

Chanting Melismas lugubrious,

Music melting into dubious

Infinities.

A bell-filled Death,

Where the Verbs of Time are always heard,

And the Hues of Love are always blurred,

Where Colors blending, confounding, and transcending,

Time-rhymed Colors, Verb-blurred Colors,

All unnamed and unknown are stirred by the Hand

Of God.

The other, setting a poem of Walt Whitman “The Last Invocation”:

AT the last, tenderly,

From the walls of the powerful, fortress’d house,

From the clasp of the knitted locks—from the keep of the well-closed doors,

Let me be wafted.

Let me glide noiselessly forth;

With the key of softness unlock the locks—with a whisper,

Set ope the doors, O Soul!

Tenderly! be not impatient!

(Strong is your hold, O mortal flesh!

Strong is your hold, O love.)