Hebenus ac Ebur

It is indeed National Poetry Day, and it has spurred me to finish a poem I've been thinking about for a while. It was to be my first foray into Latin Verse Composition, but even I thought that may end up being a little elitist. Plus, it was really, really difficult.

Although it is on some level anathema to me to do this, I feel it might need just a little context before being read. My mother has had, as long as I can remember, a grand piano. It's where I first learnt about music, and how to sing and play. This year, she has sold it, and in about a week's time, it goes to its new home.

Hebenus ac Ebur

It sits alone, still and silent

Not through reverence or neglect,

But because it no longer fits.

A plant in a garden overgrown,

.Choked and shaded

Not by weeds, but some other pretty flower

Flourishing in the sunlight.

With every day it petrifies,

Grey with dust it becomes

An Ozymandian monument,

A lonely edifice to a life no longer lived.

Cracked, worn, stained, chipped,

A coffin entombed with memories.

Yet it is still whole, while echoes

Of a thousand fingers can be heard.

Snatches of tunes half-remembered,

Secret, childish melodies

Lie beneath the lid.

Songs that were, and aren't,

And could never be

Are trapped behind our ears,

Accompanying our daydreams.

We cannot look. But we can listen

To the new notes born from old keys,

And rejoice in their renewal.

Another temple to these gods,

Another priest, another hymn.

But this same altar.

I do not feel like this poem is finished. I keep coming back to it, but I can't get it there. The irregular, unstructured verse might be the culprit (free verse is not my friend), but I think the 'alyrical' nature is too important to be hammered into something that flows better. I'm coming round to the idea that it is unfinished because my feelings on the subject are unfinished. This is not art as catharsis so much as an expression of something being taken from me that I'm not quite ready to part with yet. So, with the weird logic poetry criticism so often takes, the unfinished nature is somehow an integral part of it for me now. Maybe I'll finish it one day when I have my own altar to Music, and a new disciple to indoctrinate.