"Largo" [by Donald Revell]

Largo

Schubert was poorly. Sun motes danced an arc
Of emptiness over the lens of Vienna, and staves,
Rivers of them, purled towards the brute frontier.
Romance is the kindergarten of savagery.
Striving for health, music presses backwards
Against time, against the walking woods
And bleached-out sunlight of tomorrow—tomorrow
Morning worst of all. A clear lens, a stave
Crowded with sharps and signatures, opens
Onto a hastening multitude in old clothes—they
Were the music, once upon a time, returning
Ragged and boisterous from Arcady.
Schubert is among them, youthful and macabre.
The sun is the Romani walking beside him.

 --Donald Revell

from Canandaigua by Donald Revell (Alice James Books, 2024), a book that "compounds itself of archaic beauty and immediate freshets, of fair vigils of praise aand invention." -- Angela Ball

Comments

[mwschmeer]

Why all the typos in the attribution?

[Mary Gilliland]

Wow
walking woods and bleached-out sunlight of tomorrow
kindergarten of savagery
andcetera
truly Schubert
truly music
DR, you have made my morning. thank you!