by Ann Porter
This poem was shared with me by a friend who has studied music with me for several years and I want to share it with you.
(You can hear it read aloud by Garrison Keillor on the Writer’s Alamanac here.)
|
When I was a child
I once sat sobbing on the floor Beside my mother’s piano As she played and sang For there was in her singing A shy yet solemn glory My smallness could not hold And when I was asked
Why I was crying I had no words for it I only shook my head And went on crying Why is it that music
At its most beautiful Opens a wound in us An ache a desolation Deep as a homesickness For some far-off And half-forgotten country I’ve never understood
Why this is so But there’s an ancient legend
From the other side of the world That gives away the secret Of this mysterious sorrow For centuries on centuries We have been wandering But we were made for Paradise As deer for the forest And when music comes to us
With its heavenly beauty It brings us desolation For when we hear it We half remember That lost native country We dimly remember the fields
Their fragrant windswept clover The birdsongs in the orchards The wild white violets in the moss By the transparent streams And shining at the heart of it
Is the longed-for beauty Of the One who waits for us Who will always wait for us In those radiant meadows Yet also came to live with us
And wanders where we wander. |