My entry to RGS's Inkspiration. I hope they like it...
How I long to paint the world as they do!
Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Debussy, Rachmaninov
How can it be that entire worlds unravel in my eyes
At the single brush of the flute’s soliloquy on my ear
Or the glorious fanfare of the orchestra’s tutti
Or the crystal ringing echo on the cold dark keys?
How can shifting regular wavelengths of varying amplitude
Recreate the shimmering reflections in Monet’s Water Lilies
Or the rattling rifles of the Russian Revolution
Or the delicate lace dance of the swans in Swan Lake
Or the whisper of pure liquid moonlight streaming through the windows?
It will never be within my grasp, this magic they work
Twelve notes divided by frequency spaces the twelfth root of two
In measures of three, four, seven, eight simple, compound, irregular
Rearranged into a one-page etude or a thirty-minute symphony
A soli, a diminished seventh in the upper registers
Passionate, fantastical, sparkling, blazing
Breaking the bounds of imagination—
How I wish I could shape sound into beauty, as they did!
I wish I had music,
But all I have are words.
And words limit me to only that much
A paradigm on paper made in ink
A million-strong divine vocabulary
Only showing, telling, implying by nuances—
Nothing, next to the mind-blowing dimensions
That the greatest composers wove
Upon the strings and reeds and keys
And burnt into the hearts of the world
With
Chains of beamed black circles
On five evenly-spaced lines
