94 - The Organ Recital

The Organ Recital
By Sara MacDonald

We bad come in from rain-soaked streets
bordered by fresh-breaking daffodils, forsythia, and redbud,
Talking of clothes and food and trips
And that morning's baptism of babies.

Now we sit quietly in the Kansas church
Its modest wood beams curved above us,
Dampening the upward thrust of ranked steel pipes.

You walk to the bench and sit poised,
a small figure against the rising pipes,
Fragile fingers over keys,
Feet over pedals,
When suddenly you, we, all, are swung into sound.

The great Bach Prelude and Fugue swirls forth.
The heavy chords draw us
Into its world of vision and order.
Melody weaves in and out,
Pedals and manuals mesh together,
Moving inexorably toward the finale.

Like others long ago in far-off cathedrals,
Bounded by cold stone and soaring arch,
We now repeat the ceremony of ages.
Like then, the music lifts into transcendent now,
the sear of ecstasy,
of singing and dancing on Resurrection Day
for the standing Jesus,
an audience of one whose applause will complete all.

You finish, pause, and rise.
Our inarticulate applause thrusts the moment into memory,
To be stored with other fragments of the day.

Later you tell of Olivier Messiaen,
The devout contemporary Catholic,
And his "Les Corps glorieux."
You say, "It divides in two,
first the conflict of evil and good,
then the triumph of good."

Sara MacDonald is Associate Professor of English at Sterling College, Kansas. "I teach everything," she says, "from film to contemporary 'British lit,' while carrying on the fight against comma splices and misused apostrophes." She wishes to dedicate this poem, "The Organ Recital," to Jo Deen Blaine, organist.

95 - The Organ Recital

Bach's holiness still rests upon us
As you touch the pedals.
But the stainless steel bends, cracks, and deranges the air.
The keys shudder,
The chords tear apart.

This is no ceremony of ages
But the beast come slouching to Bethlehem.
I cannot hear but only feel
Motion passing through my diaphanous self.
Time and space are twisted and hurled,
Masculinity's strength lasered into
Single-minded hatred of created things.

Thickly coated samurai march,
Sauron and his Dark Riders stalk, invisible in shadows,
Auschwitz, Hiroshima, and Saigon crowd with wraiths
made repulsive by suffering.
It is Armaggedon, the seven-headed beast unchained,
the blood-soaked horses, waiting.

I ache with claustrophobia of corruption,
unable to breathe,
not permitted to be.

Then silence, heavy with uncertainty.

The music, tempered by light vibrato, resumes,
Its melody flute-like above, clear, softly persistent.
There is no dialogue, no conquering of discord by euphony.
Has peace no memory
of the brutal Bombarde before?

Lovers walk through flowered meadows,
Grandmothers with children look across fields of rich-blond wheat,
Children walk beside milk-bright unicorns,
Monet stands mesmerized by lily ponds,
And John watches the Dove descend.

I am breathed back into existence
filled with a joyful pain of God's love
after the fire of frenzy.

Can triumph be so soft, so quiet, so unobtrusive?

The music continues and you linger,
Reluctant to end.
Finally you pause, rise,
And we applaud our inarticulate love.

How can we tell you of visions rebirthed?
Of Bach's splendid Omega and Messiaen's earthly Eden,
Of ecstacy and contentment?

96 - The Organ Recital

Tempered by Messiaen's violence,
purged before victory,
We know now what
Isaiah knew,
his great joy brought through burning
and sent back to those who had forgotten
Sinai and Jericho and quiet years by Jordan.

We smile, speak cliches to you, and step out
into the spring afternoon,
golden children, for now dispossessed,
walking through the green-glory day.