Orfeo

Orfeo
 
the weight of sorrow, hope, distrust, 
was too great to balance 
on the staves of lyre-music. 

Understandable distrust made you turn, 
the shade, too light to make a leaf-patter 
in the living world, unheard, 

you saw, drawn back into deeper dark, 
a plaintive twist of fading notes, 
a hand clutching empty air. 


Orfeo

will we sing this year alive 
with violet and muscari blue, sky-swept,
play the damp tree bark green with unfurling, 
shout with geese and cormorants 
winding skeins above the river 
or fall back unseen, our love songs unheard, 
content with the half-life of shades 
reflected on tiny screens? 

Orfeo

is dead of love and loss, 
and only a simulacre sings, 
a cracked record, 
but who knows the difference 
these days?