“Three things that old music had: lyrics we could
understand, a story to be told and heart.”
—Anonymous comment to the song “The Windmills of Your Mind” (1969)
Ancient theaters of Dionysus
were as democratic as the people
in those times could make them be —
if possible, as large as to hold
all the male citizens in town.
But their Odea, theaters for music,
were strikingly smaller and fewer —
not unlike adornments — addons
that work at their best
if they strike the golden mean —
neither too much nor too little
but just enough, just right
to free the inside current
ripened in fruits of the notes —
but only for the chosen few.
And so — next to the many
and their entertainment’s roar
made of masks and tails and hooves,
they had these oases to which
pure beauty came, to be
and be plucked,
and just as it is equally strange
that to learn playing music well
takes all one’s time but much less to act,
and yet, as in love as opposed to
what goes — rather wrongly — in her name,
it is so rare to be treated to those finest sounds.
