a shy and solemn glory

 

Music by Anne Porter

When I was a child
I once sat sobbing on the floor
Beside my mother’s piano
As she played and sang
For there was in her singing
A shy yet solemn glory
My smallness could not hold

And when I was asked
Why I was crying
I had no words for it
I only shook my head
And went on crying

Why is it that music
At its most beautiful
Opens a wound in us
An ache a desolation
Deep as a homesickness
For some far-off
And half-forgotten country

I’ve never understood
Why this is so

But there’s an ancient legend
From the other side of the world
That gives away the secret
Of this mysterious sorrow

For centuries on centuries
We have been wandering
But we were made for Paradise
As deer for the forest

And when music comes to us
With its heavenly beauty
It brings us desolation
For when we hear it
We half remember
That lost native country

We dimly remember the fields
Their fragrant windswept clover
The birdsongs in the orchards
The wild white violets in the moss
By the transparent streams

And shining at the heart of it
Is the longed-for beauty
Of the One who waits for us
Who will always wait for us
In those radiant meadows 

Yet also came to live with us
And wanders where we wander.

I was stunned when I came upon this poem as though someone i had not heard from for a while had returned with a gift. 

Some poems like this one not only stimulate memories but align them with life and love. Beauty does that and so does articulation of beauty.

I have had a similar experience to the poet’s while unable to express it so eloquently and also unable to answer the why’s and why nows of it all. What this and that leave me with however is a mystery of eternal beauty, radiant, lyrical, and enticing.

In the end we follow that thread of illuminated wonder to the One who waits and paradoxically “wanders where we wander”.  In the desolation we are consoled by accompaniment and beckoning. 

i am left to remain with a "shy yet solemn glory",