Solemnity

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

The saddest music holds affinity

With brownish purple, mourning like a puce

Wound partly healed.  A masculinity

In mourning sounds a sadness never loose,

As strong as stretched Adagio for Strings

In Princess Grace’s funeral.  Barber found

Vienna Philharmonic & Gustavo Dudamel – Barber: Adagio for Strings, Op.11 (SNC 2019)

Perfection in solemnity with wings

Of birds of paradise with pinioned sound.

A somber chest of forte hairs across

Its smouldered muscles and its skin knows well

The meaning like the tinge of gravestone moss.

It stricts itself to soughing’s rise and swell.

  This strength of doom and shadows of the male

    Heals deafness groping for a soundless Braille.

© Phillip Whidden