Kathy Towers
Miserere
Never forget they are singing for mercy
these whey-faced castrati, and in darkness
that each of their parts is no more and no less
than what they elect to make of themselves on the day
and that each altered version, neither written
nor kept, is a votive lit for princes and popes
come to the chiesa nova to wash their souls clean
in the voices of infants, angels or immaculate men.
Never forget that plain song falls short when God
can be stitched in so many colours and threads
that the chalice of pride belongs to the voice
that decants that bright C like an unction into the gloom
-and would have us believe it is heaven distilled and dispensed.
Have mercy upon us, O God, in all thy great goodness.
Page(s) 103
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