ODE TO A HORN
Variations on a poem found in an ancient copy
ETUDE
The old bassoon is the horn for me,
It's the horn that fills my soul with glee.
Those plaintive notes so smooth and bland
Are the finest thing in the finest band.
The oboe squeal like a soul in pain.
The small drum sounds like a railroad train,
The clarinet noodles from zone to zone,
But the bassoon stands out proud and 'lone.
The cornet sounds out loud and clear,
It rings its message to the ear,
It has the goods sure as you're born,
But it's the BASSOON that has my heart torn.
Tess Goodfriend
(Her father was founder of Local 77, AF of M;
Philadelphia)
Like gleaming stainless fairies rising to the morning sun
Defining such perfect arcs
Such graceful curves
There coded heads adorn forever some parchment
Adorn in black or red adjective this vista or that smile
And then falling back in perfect arching symetry (sic)
To await the poet's next graceful caress
Each alone and different
Each alike and firm
Like some phallic feather dipped in the ink of a man's blood
And offered to you, fair Dallic dame, in memory of another
Whose carriage was bent with age
Whose grace Olympus itself had mourned
Our typewriter--our soul
Our future hinged sticky on its torment
Milky Underwood.
But as the sun must its Corona bare to the horizon
And days and years must pass beyond tabulation
We too must follow the ribbon of life
Each memory a parenthesis
We cannot backspace.
Those of our # who remain together this summer
Can share in the dim margins of corridors deep and damp
Memories . . .
We, the impresserario's finest act
Shall not forget a broken typewriter shared;
The shared lick on some gamble hinge in a stolen moment . . .
I 1/2 this to cherish, the ¢'s of its is always with me.
Shirley you are = to the 2 ominous "idian task
Our love was not -ed on the ? of eternity
Y U X it of yourself and still you R non-cd
Oh muses, release me, release, release me, release me, release
Chris Millard (solo bassoon; Vancouver Symphony)