Lord of Song

The waters of the river 
Go on and on forever,
Bearing the head with them.
And still and still he sings,
His voice on lyric wings,
His voice still a gem.

"The mountains and the forests, the rivers and the trees!
I have loved them all, lovely things, in my time.
I have wandered along the shores of distant seas,
And I have done my best to immortalize them in rhyme,
To make them immortal as Apollo in his car above.
But never did I realize how immortal is mortal love.

"The serpent took Eurydice upon our very wedding day,
And I saw the light fade from her lips and from her eyes,
As when the night, come in late summer, steals away
The long light that began its flourishing with solstice's sunrise.
I was her new-made husband, and I carried with me my lyre.
I expected to win her back; I did not think I would feel the fire.

"I went down into the corridors, the bowels of very hell,
And saw Hades and Persephone, dark king and pale queen.
I thought that if I played for them- if I played very well-
They might let the shade of Eurydice return with me unseen
To the light; I thought to play as was any husband's duty.
I did not think, I did not know, I would manage to play her beauty.

"I had not known my wife that long, after all, and never
Had I bedded her, had I known her with her head on the pillow.
I have heard all the singers say the love that endures forever,
And moves the lyre strings to sing as foam upon the billow,
Is the love that is born of body as well as heart and mind and soul;
To compose a song that would tell of love, one must know the whole.

"But I did not, and I found my hands skimming on the strings,
Light at first, a stroking motion, before becoming an explosion
Of fluttering song and sound, as when I heard songbirds' wings
When I looked into her eyes, and knew childhood's, youth's erosion.
I was not a boy, I was a man, when I learned to love my bride.
I had not known that- would not have known- and how hard I tried!-

"Before I knew her, to be something more than what I was.
But I could not change myself when I did not know the answer
To the riddle, or when I did not have a primal mover and a cause.
She gave me the cause when she moved as a dancer
To the songs of truth and reason, to the songs of love and light.
She gave me something that made heedlessness take flight

"As it could have done alone under the eye of a woman who
Was more than I was, who challenged me to grow and bloom.
She was a sunflower, arching up to see the sky's bright endless hue,
But not leaving me in the shade; under her petals she made me room.
She taught me well, she taught me hard, though I did not know her long.
And she taught me, how she taught me, to become the lord of song!

"But I could not have, I would not have- how painful to aspire,
And then to be denied by your own triumph, to turn to share the joy,
And see her face and eyes fall back, to feel the burning of love's fire
Shatter apart into a burning that will consume and souls destroy!
The gift she had given me remained still, but I might have had everything:
I might have learned to cry out with joy, as well as learned to sing!"

The waters of the river 
Go on and on forever,
Bearing the head with them.
And still and still he sings,
His voice on lyric wings,
His voice still a gem.