Masterful Music

modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

If I were forced … rubato-like … to choose,

I’d scrap the faster movements, salvage slow,

I lento, largo… e … grave ones. Blues

Would trump all Dixieland. Adagio

Would be the fastest I’d allow. The leagues

Of quick and quicker would be killed off, fast.

Supreme among survivors would be Grieg’s

Concerto for piano, not the last

Of movements, but the second, Mendelssohn’s

For violin in E, maestoso horns,

And Menuhin. I’d kill off rapid guns

In presto pieces. Mostly, Mozart mourns

In heaven with concerto twenty-one,

Andante, sacred as a raptured nun.