Wind Instruments
Trombone
I am the brawny man without a brain
Who yawns a heartfelt music mournfully.
The military orchestra reveres
My manliness. Each Sunday afternoon
I lead in the Gaillard-Apothéose.
For I exude no poignant, fevered sounds
And yet I have my share of sentiment.
The soldier boy who perished by his will
For King and Country’s call, I represent.
I stand for honour, bravery’s my spouse
And that I swear’s no enviable rôle—
My sounds lack pepper often when they seem
To fall in relaxation on a couch,
But hold my player culpable for that;
Confiteor! I know I have defects;
But do not grudge me my solidity!
Hautbois
The descendant of that reed
The shepherds played in Attica,
Drowsing to the indolence of their brown bodies,
I peck the eyes of silence
With the vulture-beak of my primeval harshness.
Yet the high keys of an organ
Are rivals lean to mine,
Sonorous in primitive ingenuities
Which blister the most Wagnerian cynics[1]
With their clear-dropping, honey-comb dripping notes.
For you expect in flurry cohorts
The bees to swarm out “zoo-oom, zoo-oom”
Scything the phosphorescence on this air
Of agate-carved medallions,
Where all are statuettes from Tanagra.
[1] Bother those lick-spittles!
Trumpet
The turbid air is buttered over now
With streaks of marbled stillness, as the prow
Of some deserted galleon; then I,
A pennon floating down the jagged sky,
Dissolve the butter with a single blast
Until the quiet falls, a broken mast
Like giant hail that thrashes on the leads
I paralyse and rip the air to shreds,
I flash my sparks of forest-powdering noise;
The formidable fanfares that I poise,
Ominous heralds of catastrophe,
As grapes of cloudy vintage on a sea
Purple and swollen, lecherous for thirst,
That wait until the thunderclaps, then burst.
When calm is ravished and I make retreat
Still throbs the air, still fevered temples beat....
Cor.
I trumpet orange clear and strong
And then I falter in my song,
My breath falls stertorous when I climb,
My notes are sudden-shivery in the ankles.
Fierce red I turn, but like a blurry prism
Half-red, half-yellow, sinewy I grip
With potent gums onto the banister
Of music.
My notes call often desperate retreats
From battle-fields corpse-rich, still dear, still strong,
More passionate than grief, fevered than hatred,
Still dear, still strong, I wail a-down the breeze—
Which raises a poignant odour of putrefaction.
Flute
Though sharp
I ne-
ver harp
Upon
My clear-
ness like
A fear-
ful bird.
My fresh
And pier-
cing mesh
Of notes
Entrap
The sense
And lap
The mind.
I re-
present
The light
Of moon
In night
Of June.
A sea
Of scent
From wood-
land vine
I could
Define
With clear-
ness like
A fear-
ful bird.