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Sarabande


 


 

I find myself posting this poem at the end of January – the 27th, Holocaust Memorial Day.

So much has been said, dwelt upon and shown – absolutely rightly – about this particular eightieth anniversary.

I offer here a description of a solitary player of music at that place – music, the most abstract of all the arts. It could be suggested paradoxically that the abstract may not represent the worst way to approach the most real, most grounded of events.

I don't know.

I do know that February, and life itself, lies ahead, for which I give thanks.

Perhaps it's best that no more be said now.





Double Sarabande in 9/8

from Bach’s Partita No. 2 in D minor for Solo Violin

 

Before he began there was silence.

Now as he follows the lines

the Sarabande accompanies him.

 

He proceeds with care placing his feet

upon those old sleepers sunken and soaked

avoiding the ballast and cinders.

 

The quavers are harnessed in triplets

rising and falling as they were instructed

a long time ago.

 

Boxed up in its bar lines each group is ordered

apart but sequential dependent upon

what happened before.

 

The rails run on like lines on the stave

to their vanishing point when silence resumes.

But the music continues

 

each section repeated though different.

And so he walks on still watching his step

giving life to those dots

 

which woken a moment die as they live

to give way to the next. He plays on

while advancing

 

leaving no trace. Still watching his step

he approaches the end where the gate

of a double bar waits.

 

A broken B minor two octave chord

ascends in the air to vanish like smoke.





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