Musical experience at Grace Cathedral...

A friend suggested I take out the name "Hilliard Ensemble" from my poem, written about 5 years ago and revised. My feeling was that people who knew the musical group would be interested in the meditative, and even contemplative experience it brought to me.

In this poem I write of the sense of present largeness of loneliness that the music elicted. It was an emptying experience. Music does elicit religious and spiritual sensibilities. As you the reader may recognize in my poem, one emotion and experience does not bar another. You'll find some words of the Hilliard Ensemble end the poem; I thought them moving. I hope you enjoy this poem of a musical experience at Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, California USA.


Thoughts on the experience of a Concert...
by Peter Menkin

The existential aloneness, yearning enters as a musical cry,
like a procession
the music flows through the Cathedral.

I join this human allowance in the finitude.
In retrospect, memory brings days enjoyed,
like the heart seeking. Beautiful sound.
The hearing of the listening ear
enjoins the great spirits [heavenly praise]
they gather
in bringing more clearly a presence:

everlasting peace in a depth of I am,
stays.
What elicited this to mind was sound.
This more than exercise as a movement
in music is recollected from the Cathedral,

where the players invoked a sense of Christ,
done by the Hilliard Ensemble--
music that speaks spare words:

A saxaphonist met a vocal quartet. Listen to this unusual sound.
What they play brings consideration...
in the morning,
in the loneliness, at night.

How the music waits upon us for engagement,
self emptying love given to respond. Allow
your love to come enjoining us to know:
"A blown husk that is finished
but the light sings eternal
a pale flare over marshes
where the salt hay whispers to tide's change."
I am.