VIVALDI

Music consists
of men in red and black
climbing a broad staircase.
Goethe

Withness is all.

In the dark church of music
Which never is of land or sea alone
But moves within the air inside the mind,
Patterns in motion and in action, successions
Of processions, moving with the majesty of certainty
To part the unparted curtains, to bring the chandeliers
Into the sarabande of courtiers who have bowed and kurtsied,
Turned somersaults in circuses, climbed masts and towers,
Or dived from a glittering tower toward a glistening lake,
Springing, daring and assured, fearless and precise
To find, in the darkness, the dark church
Which music is: this is what music is:
It has no meaning and it possesses all meaning
For it possesses all meaning as it conquers consciousness
Because it declares with theompombudecumbitude:

Remorse, here is the scar of healing!
Here is a window, O curiosity!
And here, O sensuality, a sofa!
Behold, for ambition's purposeless energy and insensate desire
Mountains rising beyond mountains
More tense and steep than the mountains already climbed.

2

Is uttered fully and yet freshly, newly and uniquely,
Uniquely and newly, freshly yet fully repeated then.

## II

O clear soprano like the morning peal of bluebells!
O the water colors of the early morning,
Con amore and vivace, dancing, prancing, galloping, rollicking!

#

This is the surrender to the splendor of being's becoming and being!
Here are all the flowers and the images of faces as flowers of fear and
hope, longing and despair;

Here is the hour of the new blue flower

Dissolved, consumed in this being that is the being of being.

So we are to be contained, so we are to be consumed--

The iron petal of the flute possesses morning's intuition;

The cellist is as Gautama Buddha, curved like an almond;

The first violinist is St. Francis of Assisi,

Blessing the trees, the cats, the birds, calling to them,
his brothers and his sisters;

The full orchestra responds to the virtuoso's cadenza:

"Love is the dark secret of everything,
Love is the open secret of everything,
An open secret as useless as the blue!"

#

Music is not water, but it moves like water,
It is not fire, but it soars as warm as the sun.
It is not rock, it is not fountain,
But rock and fountain, clock and mountain,

Vivaldi

All lights are shorn save for this swan, unseen
The port and ark of Penurge, sailing the darkness,
All desire consumed except the desire of this being,
The presence of this being, the being of this presence,
This present, this being; this is the being

The dream strives towards, and passion presses forward
(Above the clouds and the shrouds,
Rising like a plane forever,)

Far from the world of Caesar and Venus, calculation and
sensuality, ratiocination and frustration,

This is the dark city of the hidden innermost wish,
The motion beyond emotion,
The power beyond and free of power,
Beyond beyond within the witness of witness,
This is the immortality of mortality, this
Is supreme consciousness,
The self-forgetting in the self possessed and mastered

In the elation of being open to all relation
No longer watchful, wakeful, guarded, wary, no longer striving
and climbing

This is the immortality of immortality,
Deathless and present in the presence of
the deathless present

This is the grasped reality of reality, moving and ordered
Now and forever.

Delmore Schwartz

Vivaldi

e vo significando

Music consists of

men in black and red

Music is "the fellowship of the living gods"

"the enjoyment of the godhead itself."

In the dark church of music

But blooms within the air inside the mind,

Into the sarabande of courtiers who have bowed and curtsied,

strolled

Or dived as from a glittering tower toward a glistening lake

Diving daring and assured, fearless and precise

to find in the darkness the dark church

Which music is; this is what music is

It has no meaning and is possessed by all meaning,

For music says:

Remorse, here is the scar of healing,

Here is a window, curiosity!

aborted purpose

2

Mountains rising beyond the mountains

More tense and steep than any known before

II

Devout

Processional, having

Anciente

Though childlike acrobats like flowers decorate

With flourishes and entrechats the passage to success

As queens serene crowned by poise, slowly

Are drawn in cars by dragons domesticated in the last of wars

Is uttered

And then repeated fully and yet freshly, newly and uniquely.

Vivaldi — Vivacious

II

O clear soprano like the morning peal of the bluebells,

O the watercolors of the early morning,

con amore and vivace! dancing, prancing, galloping, rollicking!

Here are all the flowers and the images of faces as flowers
of fear and hope, longing and despair,

... Dissolved, consumed in this being which is the being
of being,

3

So we are to be contained, so we are to be consumed
The iron flower of the flute possesses morning's intuition,
The cellist is as Gautauma Buddha, curved like an almond,
Noah conducts the ark of all the dark beauty,
The first violinist is Assisi's Francis,

blessing the trees, the cats, the birds,
calling to them, his brothers and his
sisters

The full orchestra responds to the virtuoso's cadenza:
"Love is the dark secret of everything
Love is the open secret of everything,
An open secret useless as the blue!"

But rock and fountain, clock and mountain
Abide within it, bound together,
In radiance pulsing vibrating and reverberating,
Dominating the domination of the weather!

## IH

The music flowing as a river and a city
and a city ringed about a river
and a river mastered by a city

Has destiny's look; the dictates of the heart

Adagio

con

molto

4

And the heart's dictatorship must submit
To the score of the lyre gentled like all fire
To ashen falling failure. The music, a/lthough, is unheard/heard unseen,
Is hushed nor more nor less than snow's down/fall,
After being possessed by the dynasty of destiny
and then,
and then,
Is suddenly more selfdelighting than a troop of birds
in swinging singing ringing curving flights
In curves and swerves, dipping and perching, perching and
soaring, sailing.

The music declares.

"Is this what you want? Is this the goodness for which you
have been here convened?

"To be, to become, and to participate in the sweet congress
of serene attention?"

Silent, attentive, motionless, waiting,
Save for the heart clutching itself and the hushed
breathing

(A sudden cough!) sticks-in the enchantment's dancing,

The answered question is: Our being. Our presence. Our
surrender.

Consciousness has consented, is consumed, has surrendered,
to hear only the players playing:

5

Consciousness has become only and purely listening,
The vivid world has been barred,
The press of desire shut out
All lights are dim save for this swan, unseen
The port and ark of Panurge, sailing the darkness
All desire consumed except the desire of this being,
The presence of this being, the being of this presence,
This present, this being: _this_ is the being
The dream strives towards, and passion presses forward
(Above the clouds and the shrouds,
Rising like a plane forever)
Far from the world of Caesar and Venus, calculation and
sensuality, ratiocination and frustration,
This is the dark city of the hidden innermost wish,
The motion beyond emotion,
The power beyond and free of power,
Beyond beyond within the witness of witness,
This is the immortality of mortality, this
Is supreme consciousness,
The self-forgetting in the self possessed and mastered
In the elation of being open to all relation
No longer watchful, wakeful, guarded, wary, no longer striving
and climbing
This is the immortality of immortality,
Deathless and present in the presence of
the deathless present
This is the grasped reality of reality, moving and ordered
Now and forever.

Delmore Schwartz