All Classical Radio


Find the right station and be 
alive at Lincoln Center, plush seats 
spendy as your first rent, acoustics 
better than any shower.  At the interval, 
buy ice-cream.  You don’t need to know anyone 
or talk politics or crime. The famous conductor 
returns to your applause, nods, raises her baton.  
And what you had worried about

and what you had false-promised yourself
and whatever had insinuated into your good ear
hope and its regret – none of that stays,
none of it knows how to hear harmony,
as hands grasp bows and frogs, necks and valves 
and brass bells, the flautist under his moustache 
exhaling, saxophone notes a woman’s lips make,
oboe and cello, eyes closed, eyes closed.

O failure, rot, dissolution, and care, 
may you never see Sydney’s Opera House sailing, 
Vienna’s Gold Hall, its bright unfallen gemstones of rain, 
may you never know the Gaelic and English 
of Cardiff's wide-arched façade, that fanfare 
of slate and light:  Creu Gwir Fel Gwydr 
O Ffwrnais Awen – From Inspiration’s Furnace, 
Truth Like Glass.  In These Stones, Horizons Sing.