Musicmaker

For my friend Steve Carey

I see black moods of cloudy thought

Flung out on some strange shifting tide,

I feel some moving spirit stir and

Catch my mind and breath, the bride

Of depth and wisdom, long denied.

 

And when I cast spasmodic lines

From pen and ink in helpless grace

I sit bemused, a fortune’s fool who

Knows not where the drift, the lace

Of nature’s framework shows her face.

 

But you immerse your mind in frets

And keys and chords, and silken strings

To mould my fumbled, clumsy thought

Within melodic scores, the things

I only felt, within you sings.

 

And I’ve sat in some corner shade

While you poured out my shifting tide,

The words a spirit stirred in me

Fell silently away, to glide

Toward some distant shore, I cried.

 

David Lewis Paget