Organ Recital
for Adam
The whole world of music was there beneath
your dancing fingers and your flying feet.
I heard tubas, trombones, foghorns, bells and flutes,
whale songs, birdcalls, clarinets and lutes.
Bassoons, sackbuts, wolves howling at the moon;
The plaintive cries of oboe, owl and loon.
The diapason rumblings deep to deep
were the sighings of subterranean giants lost in sleep.
Then far above the grave-deep decibels
the tiny tintinnabulation of the bells.
I heard from the pipes the sonorous
singing of the stars– the stupendous
sound of planets winding on their way,
and angels’ boisterous trumpets poised to play.
Back to back from tremendous dissonance
surged a messianic magnificence
that gathered up the dark tumultuous tones
and bound them each together all as one.
And then the great Musician fathered forth.
He gathered up your talent and your youth,
and shook them out to show the world,
How your amazing music, bright and bold,
transposed beauty into Truth, and revealed
the intimate, fearful magnitude,
and all-majestic tenderness of God.
Messiaen, was it ?
Ahh! Someone read the poem close enough to see the pun. Lines 15 and 16 actually have two puns–the other refers to the piece by Bach
Bach didn’t usually employ dissonance as he saw it against the perfect order of God.Who was it, then ? I didn`t hear anything but Messiaen in that poem.
Line 15 the word ‘back’ is a pun referring to the fact that the organist played a Bach piece in the recital and l. 16 ‘messianic’ is a pun referring to Messiaen.You clearly didn’t see that, but picked up the ‘dissonance’ and realized there was messiaen on the program.
well, i`m not that clever, I just read the poem and heard Messiaen, (in Notre Dame, Paris) one of my favourite composers.Who wrote the weird poem, anyway ?
me.
Ah. Well, I don`t know who implied it was weird, but it is very very good. And I recommend Messiaen to any good faithful Catholic. All life is there.
I don’t actually mind if it is called ‘weird’ if by ‘weird’ one is making an objective observation. Some of the organ music itself was weird and otherworldly and I was trying to capture that mood.However if by ‘weird’ one is just expressing dislike for the poem that’s okay too, but more polite terminology could be used…:-)
OK, OK, but for us dimwits, who the heck is “Adam”–the original or a contemporary?? I read this poem at 4 a.m. EST and was tempted to ask the question then, but KNEW I would be considered a dimwit.Signed, Just your ordinary reader
Adam Pajan is a young organist from our church who played his senior recital at Furman University last week.
Me thinks you like alliteration. I don’t usually like poetry, even though I’m reading the biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay at the moment, but I do like this poem.I can hear Father L. after reading the above, “Well, whoopie ding!”
I kept thinking these last 2 days that I’d read this decades ago, and late today was able to deconflate “Organ Recital” from “High Flight.”
The poem ain’t weird. It’s unusual. I simply thought ‘Adam’ was THE Adam, and that the poem used some overheard organ recital to evoke the original creation of man, that is, Adam. And I still read it as such.Loved these stanzas:The diapason rumblings deep to deep were the sighings of subterranean giants lost in sleep.Then far above the grave-deep decibelsthe tiny tintinnabulation of the bells.I heard from the pipes the sonorous singing of the stars– the stupendoussound of planets winding on their way,and angels’ boisterous trumpets poised to play.
I didn’t know ‘high flight’. A google search produced it. Nice!