Chamber Music

 

 

 

fran carris

 

 

Not all music soothes the savage man.

As distance diffuses the notes, the melody

drives on into countryside--

carefully disguised by the gentle caress

of a flower and the whisper of cottontail.

 

We denied the dissonance, the cacophony

after all--

everyone knows there must be a classical resolve

a screen imposed.

 

Screams.

we denied the screams.

But the chorus and the conductor knew the horror

of the music from the chambers.

 

If there were any alleluias,

they signaled the cessation of

the living dead

--the finale to

the degrading mock of life

--the last move in

the cruelest of games.

 

Would that they had all been poets

they may have felt their notes penetrate.

Transcending all boundaries

laying living ghosts to rest.

 

White steeds bearing hope

would have turned eyes upward

to validate their fate as the chosen children.

 

Would that they had all been poets

they might have wished their screams

burned into stone

and known

that their story would fail upon pages

of unborn years.

 

Surviving memories

however buried

--so painfully surfaced,

recall their horror,

recall their pain.

 

The music from the chambers

lives in their tears

and dies with our denial.