Somoshree Palit
The loveliest singer, golden haired,
Sweetly struck his chord;
Looked heavenwards like he half compared
His songs with a higher god.
Bards of yore, of passion and mirth
To him their worship raise.
Born of earth, yet not of earth –
There was a yearning in his gaze.
And what could a god of poetry need?
What could make him long?
I wonder, and as the thoughts recede,
I hear a plaintive, tuneful song.
“We haven’t reached the chorus yet,
When we do I’ll let you know.
Once we reach the chorus though,
I’ll allow such indulgences. So –”
She talked of a king cursed by fate,
And like a tremor beneath a sea,
Like Dionysia for which a maenad waits,
She said, “Jocasta turned sharply.”
Somewhere howled a dog in the wild,
An ominous cry of doom,
As a knife that slashes limb from limb,
Thunder split in two a tomb.
And murky nights of deadly crimes
Need but some lines to show
That tragedy brews in the best of times,
In “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.”
“Young Adonis – the death of a god,
Was by all the Greeks lamented.”
She said, and a Delphi rose again,
“Great artists are oft tormented.”
Fancy dear, the fleeting elf,
Deceived the Star in his woe,
With Bacchus and his pards in his own self
Seeked Provencal wine in his throe.
A hundred years had wandered by,
A hundred more would follow.
She would teach me how that poet sighed,
Like Mnemosyne blessed Apollo.
I had often doubted Homer’s song,
Of the fires that he had sung.
The ambush of the Trojan land
Was arson on her tongue.
I had asked Prometheus on a fennel-stalk
To bring me the sacred fire,
As flames tore through my flesh and bones,
I saw Raphael erase the lyre.
He chose a lira di braccio instead,
And gave him an upward gaze,
Raphael painted with a knowing smile :
Even gods would yearn for her praise.
Raphael knew when Phoebus he drew
That he would raise his eyes to see
Not a higher god, but a teacher like you,
“Knowledge enormous makes a god of me.”