Connect- Disconnect ©
The other day stood a fiddler
On the corner by High Street.
In his slouch was boredom
As thick as unwashed grime.
He stood there as fixed, a thing-
That the place gave it
Some bearing of use and connect.
Onrush of spirit in freewheeling
Shoppers and the like
Who would stir anew the public places
With no particular affinity,
Sweat and scents of perfume mix’d
Jerked him upright.
Presto, went his bandanna
To its accustomed spot ;
And the fiddler laid his bow
Across the fret in a neat stroke
And began to play.
2.
Gone was his slouch as he made music;
With each phrasing layer by layer his vagrant past
He pared away; and each grace note
Gave the lie to his form.
The thing had become a man!
He deigned not to see
What was thrown at his feet;
For his spirit had outflanked the present
And he had come into his own.
Like gypsies of old he had borrowed
The street to strum a shadow world
Upon some artifice made of hands;
To play millennia of travails of his race
In snatches of music will a trifle do?
His stick though wound with horsehair
The gallop of wild places and wind wafted
Across some dark and dank lake beneath
Recreate: Disconnect the asphalt
Fixtures and sidewalks of emptiness.
Music learnt by campfire
Among pain and weariness of life,-
The eyeless turret broods over
Vampires and deathless shadows
Over the Magyars cast, so seemed to me
By chance or was there purpose
That I stumbled upon this gypsy?
By spirit, all enveloping emblem
His music connect,- lo
The shadow world of mine has become
something open, and common with his.
I for one, thought he touched my spirit
To unlock its narrow confines
Of course a fair exchange it was:
The Magyar minstrels of old
Had come visiting
And I deemed fit to honor
Memories of wild spaces,
And jingling painted caravans
For a coin or two I had to spare..
benny
