The Harmony of Knowledge of God and Evil

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

Medieval music is too meagre for

Us, you and me, especially monks’ songs,

The measures of their Plain Song moaning score

In unison of sadness where sense longs

For something more like you and me.  We need

Not their simplicity.  We need the sound

Polyphony unfolds as if a seed

Makes roots and trunk and limbs and leaves from ground

Too heaven, no, much higher.  Harmonies

And dissonance that later centuries throw

In, chords because true love is not a breeze

And not a stream, not turbulence in flow.

  Leave music of the monks behind, that line

    Castrated.  Hear, you, only the divine.

©  Phillip Whidden