The notes swirled outwards in a darting swarm.
The silence, stirred, was whirlpools, each a flower
The notes dived into, vanishing from harm.
(Clouds melt in sight some days and breed again
Before they die and murder their young rain).
Having disordered what awaited them
The notes died too but left an order there,
As though strewn petals froze back on their stem-
A ghost bush fading in substance of the air:
The flowers go first, leaving the branches bare.
The programme said ho-hum. The programme said
Op., modulation, second subject. But
The notes spun inwards, whirling in a head
Whose sky was swagged with clouds that one by one
Wavered and thinned and died into the sun.
Some sort of sacrifice had taken place,
A ritual murder of an ugly thing
Or god, or both, whose resurrected face
Gave his death meaning; and his rising was
Grace hammered out and formalised as laws.
Outside, the street swirled, swarming in a night
That waited to be understood. Cars drove
Into their silences.-What meaning might
Be walking there, a lonely Christ, disguised
As his true self and so unrecognised?
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