The Choir

18 January 2016

By silent seas we sit and sing
Of life's unwrought enamelling
As each day gathers into storm
And reasons with our untold ire.

Rise fair song and banish woe
For we must fear the foreman’s blow
For though our fathers built with stone
We build the world again each morn,

And tremble in the shade of steel,
And ache for poison salesmen sell,
And whirl in this ungrateful gyre
To placate pioneering fire.

--

What is this? What is my own?
What good is a peopled home
When urge and urge and urge inspire
Epitomes forlorn?

Hope, where are your lovely feathers?
All your crumbs are swept -- this weathered
Leaf deceives -- these grasses wither.
There are only bog and mire.

Who would dare to ope
Pandora's vessel once again? What's left?
All can see that Zeus has scorned
Those Foresight has adorned.

--

But summon those old voices hither.
Sing a song against the dither.
Won’t a mythic world reborn
Reclassify revealed desire?

Make again that age-old beat.
Forget the words that spell defeat.
Abandon prod and thrust.
Embrace the courage of the calling horn.

For we have feared the shades of steel,
But harbor dreams of living well,
And dream of lifting off the pyre,
And lift this chorus as a choir.