John Fuller
Joe Gabriel’s Dream
at the Dartington Summer School of Music
A stillness falls upon him
Though the chords strike up again.
For an hour, the world is dismissed:
Head fallen to one side
And, in repose, a fist.
Sometimes he has been these sounds,
All of them: nothing could hide it.
The lady opened the wonderful box
And he was inside it.
Her fingers touched the strings,
The strings were unsprung locks
And the sound beat up like wings.
Joe, Joe, what do you see?
The mower under the mulberry tree.
The falling mulberry, black as blood,
That leaves the tree for ever,
Alighting with a thud.
Joe, Joe, what do you hear?
Horns of the Hall, “how thin and clear”,
And distant birdsong, like a cry
To hold the summer, trickling off
The edges of the sky.
Behind his fastened eyes
The fairy of the moment
Dances her trick of memory,
The aery nothingness
That promises to stay.
From now on, nothing dies
But enters in that dance:
The bird, the mulberries;
A pair of butterflies
That tumble up the stairs
In air; the garden orchestras.
His head stirs. He sighs.
The world is a great adventure
In which he will take his chance.
Nothing exists till he has tried it.
He wakes, and all the while
The music played, she was the music.
This is her body and her smile,
And he is outside it.
Page(s) 24-25
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