De oraculis oculorum tuorum

 

With Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins

In D minor, BWV 1043—Largo ma non tanto

 

The plectrum—electrum that joins

the silver and its shade and tremor

that widens and gives in to a way

and the gold—the splendid shower  

 

of your rapt, unbroken, intent gaze—

dips me once more in a melody

the motif of which used to flee

and escape us below like Aesculapius

 

from that cave—spēlaion—that turns

the Raven or the sun from white to black,

and yet, in that world sunken underground,

a shimmering glint of memory on the walls

 

still stayed and played some of its lyrics old

from up high—echoes trickling erratically down

from the sphere of those greater lives and loves

in which the celestial retained faithfully abides.

 

And there—ever remembered and thus evoked

and thus returned, Aesculapius, the Apollonic

healer, would still descend, both learning more

and teaching us below the modes—the melodies

 

that sinuously wreathe and undulate the kindling

of the souls with bends and turns to lead us out

through that labyrinth like a master’s virtuoso hand

that finds and shows beauty folded even in the stone.

 

There that son of Apollo and poetry that educates,

elucidates, and educes out from sleep the soul

are now coming from the ends of your adored eyes,

giving a sense musical even to this space and time

 

and filled—like us, Apollo’s daughters and his sons—

with that very same Aesculapian, recuperative art

that creeps and steals its chosen souls from death

and Hell—with its immortal tip—penetrating touch.

 

Of God and love be music, let my soul be in that love

and in its know—and let our soul be that musician.

A musician conversant and intimate with that Muse.

A musician of that love and poetry forth surging font

 

when a mere verse, a strophe, a passage become—

like your speaking eyes—a way—an open gate

to where reigns this divine nature and true art—

in each other rejoined—rejoiced—recognized.