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.