"Music, when sweet voices die,

...vibrates in the memory..." - P.B. Shelley

I have been known to avow
that music is hateful to me;
now while I'm living, let me mend that great lie,
and tell it the way it should be;

When the dear human voices sing words that are true,
then listening and weeping are all I can do;
when I listen to music, nothing else can get through,
and you might as well talk to a tree.
*
Folks may think I'm mad as a loon
as unprovoked tears start to flow,
when all that I'm hearing is some plain old tune--
How can that move a grown person so?

Most any sweet ditty by Tammy Wynette
or Elvis or Twitty, or a Mozart quartet,
can start my tears raining and make me forget
all the grace and good manners I know.
*
If you must play music to me
when I'm trapped and unable to fly,
remember, I warned you, and just leave me be--
I hate it when folks see me cry;

When my heartstrings are jangled, the years roll away,
and I'm back in the fields where my friends used to play,
and my lost loves crowd around me, and whisper, and pray,
and it hurts when the sweet voices die.


by JRC - 3/19/11