(A Poem)
I slipped into
a seat
in the north transept
behind the
black-shirted basses.
Above,
the late afternoon light
flooded in through Jesus and
the Lamb and all the saints.
We were bejeweled as
we listened, bathed
in holiness and rainbow hues,
the reeded columns
stalwart
beneath the vault.
I think of them –
Gorecki in palid Polish light;
and pärt, who “shook music
from his sleeves;”
Tavener, so often on the cusp
of death.
They must have been familiar
with mortality, with
endings,
the spirit’s riotous rise
and then the silence,
the glory of the echo
and the dimming radiance of
light.
--Ken Vaughn
