Swan of Tuonela
After Jean Sibelius
It’s the
plaintive score that first drifted into
My ear and
onto a sandspit where it stayed,
Like a conch,
harboring sounds and releasing
Them at times
such as this when I am given to
Remembering.
Delivering me now to the time
Of your
departing, and asking what I would give
To have you
whole and once again in safe keeping.
But death
calls us into, and not away from, this world
Where the
cor-anglaise, haunting and unhurried,
Speaks with a
grief too deep for words, floating
Above the
shuddering strings in dusty sail, much
Like the
mystical swan upon the underworld’s
Lamp-lit
waters, cold to the wrist, nibbling like fish that
Fell into a
young boy’s pockets and swim with him still.
John Muro
A resident of
Connecticut, John’s a graduate of Trinity College, Wesleyan University and the
University of Connecticut. His first volume of poems, In the Lilac Hour,
was published last fall by Antrim House, and it is available on Amazon. His
poems have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous literary journals,
including River Heron, Sheepshead, Third Wednesday, Moria, Ariel Chart and
the French Literary Review.
the finest poetry i have read in ages. god bless you, sir.
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