Rik George writes

Remembrance Fourteen

She is gone beyond my reach.
Lectures I have for teaching sisters
To avoid the touch of unseen disasters;
I have no pulpit from which to preach

Cautions for her. She does not feel
My brotherly care or my concern.
The dead lie unaware of the turn
The planets make in their quadrille

To keep the beat. The dead don’t care
If oboes are flat or trombones sharp
Or if the string choirs twist and warp
Some concert master’s favorite score.

The dead don’t mind the band’s off-key.
Or that the strings are late to start
Their ears are stopped with graveyard dirt
They can’t hear the symphony

Ringing in the welkin’s concert hall.
Mud plugs their ears. Perhaps they sleep
More soundly in sepulchers that keep
The star-songs quiet and moon-songs still.
 

Symphony Orchestra -- Samuel Asamoah