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 succour unavailed,

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.