Beethoven played by so many hands
He is everlasting applause.
Da Vinci in so many eyes
He still paints upon humanity.
Shakespeare on so many lips
He has kissed the fleeting light.
Handel in so many churches
He is the stained glass of the soul.
Dickens in so many living rooms
He has become the tree of charity.
Van Gogh on so many walls
He is a window on the night sky.
Dostoevsky in so many minds
He is a book without pages.
Mozart in so many ears
He’s been memorized by air.
Was is it an allegory of divine providence?
Or error of reification? At best, an appeal to probability.
It would take Plutarch and Shakespeare
Together to create so parallel a stage,
A theater with as many clouds and beams,
A shoreline for such drama and articulation,
Everything convergent on our arrival,
The return of art to life from art in life,
Doomed ice on shattered waters,
The vivid sun halo and vast light,
Sun dogs and rainbow zenith arcs,
It obscured both history and tragedy.
... neither God nor No-God
Louis MacNeice
Not clouds but burkas naked on clotheslines,
Hawksmoor gloom with Horus eye,
Warzone Luftwaffe left-over thunder,
Lions’ heads on building tops,
Quorum of the heavens… London fog
And a neighborhood in London fog,
The ghost of Hitchcock at the window
Of his house gave the shadow of a doubt.
Nothing was real, not buildings or streets.
Only a waking sleep from cab to cab
And a destination from which you depart.
Not clouds but statues wet in flesh
And veil, as in “The Winter’s Tale,”
Or the dead likeness of a changing guard.
North of the city an explosion; south, a beheading.
Astride the block a shadow slumps.
The head of God, a cloud in a basket.
Salvatore Ala 