[New-Poetry] Age of the Great Symphonies

[David Graham]

The Age of the Great Symphonies


The age of the great symphonies
is over now.

The symphonies rose toward heaven with real magnificence--
sunlit clouds with thunder
over the brilliant centuries.
Cumulus under blue skies. Coriolanus.

Now they are coming back down again in the form of rain,
a banded, stone‑colored rain on all the wavelengths and programs
covering earth like a wet overcoat, a sack of noise.

Now they are coming back down from the sky,
they bounce off the skyscrapers like electric hail
and seep down into farmers' living rooms
and roll over the suburbs and brick‑oceans
as immortal sound.

A rain of sound,
"You millions of this earth, embrace"
so as to deaden screams

every day, every day
on this earth which is thirsty and takes them back into itself again.


--Rolf Jacobsen.  Trans. Robert Bly.  *The Roads Have Come to An End  
Now:  Selected & Last Poems of Rolf Jacobsen*.  Copper Canyon Press,  
2001..


==========================================
David Graham
grahamd at ripon.edu
Home Page:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/index.html
Poetry Library:
http://www.ripon.edu/faculty/GrahamD/poetrylib.html
==========================================



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