Evensong in Edinburgh:
the Cauld Alliance
I trudge to the cathedral to contend
With flu. I’ve taken drugs, of course, before
I started out. I’m hoping that the blend
Of chemicals and harmonies will score
Against the virus in my head, my throat,
My bones. It’s Fauré’s Requiem that flows
Into my ears. Remedies and songs float
My mind through a muzzy Limbo. I doze
Into a near Nirvana. I doze. . . wake . . .
And sleep and wake, in layered choral haze,
And sink down slowly out of fevered ache
And rise up dim in music’s gauzy maze.
The edge of painless calm is crossed, re-crossed,
And now French sounds are clear and now are lost.
“and now the words are clear and now are lost” Dante, Purgatorio, Canto IX, line 145
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