One Poem by John Copley Alter

 

 

Reading the lectionary, listening to Beethoven

 

grow in grace

We live in D minor, yes

melancholy woman/

liness Schubert called it

the spleen and humours brood,

 

the heartbreak key.  If ghosts could

speak…  We live poignantly,

you and I, love adjectives

from long ago that still

 

sting—from long ago, the books

we read, the symphony

we want played when our life ends.

We live in D minor,

 

yes

yes

 

Nineveh, that great city

When asked to preach on the Sunday

of shock and awe I read Jonah

from Now the word of the Lord came

unto Jonah to And should I

 

not spare Nineveh…and also

much cattle and sat down, trusting

the congregation to under/

stand that Nineveh and Baghdad

 

are the same city, tears in my

eyes.  I could as well have played them

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in

D Minor, yes.  You get my drift,

 

yes

 

a troubled spirit

Who does not have a troubled spirit these

days?  Who does not hear the poignant

                        sorrow

of Beethoven (a breeze stirring dry leaves)?

Who does not know grief?  Ay, in the very

 

temple of Delight/Veil'd Melancholy

has her sovran shrine.  A father grieves his

son.  In the garden—look—on that barren

branch—a leaf.  Wisdom speaks D minor, then.

 

Remember—the peony shares colour

with the stars.  Suddenly a Rothko paint/

ing speaks. 

 

an evil generation

Don't go with the flow.

Be the flow! Rumi beseeches

us, here in this evil

 

generation.  Allow the energy stars

have, little children have, Beethoven

in his Ninth Symphony—has,

 

allow that energy to return

to your knees, your elbows

the back of your neck.

 

Dance, you fool, the peony

in an early morning breeze

reminds me.  Listen—pages turn,

 

it is the beloved reader.  Early morning,

he sits still—midrash of the sun.

 

            --for Guru Chahal

John Copley Alter currently lives in Shanghai.  He began writing poetry in India as a seventh grader—an indelible memory, back when the Indo-China War was young.  Now, he transposes Tang Dynasty poems; tutors; proselytizes for Walt Whitman.

Over the years—India, university, Conscientious Objection, Sweden, Maine, marriage, three children (all grown now, one with a child): Mauritania, Senegal, up and down the eastern seaboard.  Teacher.  Administrator.  Writer: poetry primarily, drama.

 So it goes, life being what it is.