Sunday, June 16, 2013

A SUN AS PALE AS MOONSHINE











On the fourth floor of the art gallery
there is an installation piece
And it doesn't look like anything
special, tucked off to the side
of all those mammoth Moores
reclining there...

Just a wide circle of small speakers
on tall poles; there must be
about thirty,
And in the centre
shoved every which way...
maybe a dozen or so, black
stools -- the faux leather type
with the folding chrome legs?

Feeling almost foolish, I sink
onto one of the stools and strain
to hear the speakers...nothing.
I have an urge to giggle but
restrain myself.
The sun streaming in here,
is pale as moonshine
I am thinking,
just as I get a sense
of chattering from one
of the speakers--
Chattering?
Am I going crazy?

Then, a thousand angel voices
shatter the space!
Higher than the highest sopranos over here;
blending with the deepest basso profundo there, no--there!
No--it's those sublime tenors back there I think, no wait...
I stop trying to sort out, define, categorize and just
let the reverberations, echoes, resonances...all of it
Scoop out my soul and cut free my sentient self
I close my eyes and for the next
--who knows how long--
I give myself up to this wondrous sound, only sound
seems too plebeian a word to describe
what holds me so enthralled...

And when it's finished, the silence is a sound itself
So totally different and fraught with meaning is it
I feel as if an enormous load has shifted from me
A load I knew not I was toting, but now it splits
from me so completely I'm lighter and leaving
is like waking from deep sleep and crawling
from inside a dark cave...



10 comments:

  1. Thanks so much for sharing this experience. Wish I could have been there. You make it real and intriguing.

    Elizabeth
    (no poem this week)

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  2. nice....really cool piece...and sounds like quite the experience...what is all the more tangible for me is that last stanza...the feel of the silence after....very cool poem...i need to visit your art gallery...smiles.

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  3. Oh yes, sometimes you get lost in the sheer beauty of voices...a beautiful way to be carried away!

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  4. So totally different and fraught with meaning is it
    I feel as if an enormous load has shifted from me
    A load I knew not I was toting, but now it splits
    from me so completely

    Such deep meaning in this, SE! One often gets mesmerized with certain sounds. Felt it myself. If one cares enough just reflecting for some minutes on these sounds can be most useful. Ideas somehow come tumbling down in seconds! Nicely!

    Hank

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  5. very cool how it touched you so unexpected and unprepared..that's the best thing when art happens just like that.. and cool how much it did to you that you left so different

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  6. It is the way you experience the world, express and share your vision with others that is purely poetic - and simply, essential, you. Beautiful as always .

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  7. Music has wondrous power and whether mythical or not, yours sounded utterly entrancing. I must go and play some Gorecki.

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  8. Beautiful work, Sharon. Music can shift our perspective, our emotions...our spirits. I like, "the silence is a sound itself..."

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  9. A beautiful poem, Sharon. Yes, music can transport us to another world.

    Pamela

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