Wednesday 1 February 2012

Four Old Poems and Music

4. The Great Spirit

Once
the spirits and I gazed
out of King Crimson,
Hendrix,
the Airplane
or some other purple haze.
We sang Oms,
ghost-voices prophesying peace.
We had our hair as strength,
bright eyes dreaming,
a harmony of faces.

Now
the spirits and I haunt
out of time.
We are balding,
eyes hollowing,
sing out of tune
in a darkness that has not changed.

[in a pique of vain defence, I'll just say that I still have my hair! I couldn't find a fourth from the sequence I had intended to post under this heading, but did come across this, written in 1990, which seems far more cynical at that time than the feelings I now have about music and nostalgia. As to a faith in hope for change offered by music in the 60s/70s, I think I have got over this fantasy twenty two years after that apocalyptic if dispirited recognition, and forty plus years after the initial idealism.]

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