October 14, 2004

Sever Seven Strings

Dear harp, you play no more. No song falls from these nimble fingertips that have long since turned to razors. I wish I had known that the sonata would've become your requiem. If only your story had been carved a little deeper to see. We all become blind, sometimes...

But what a show it was! If ever there was a soul unmoved, I knew them not. There was none who could capture an audience in the fashion that you had mastered. You tied them to your golden strings and played them as your own. Ballads of life, love, and mediocrity... of passion and lust, animosity and adoration...

You knew the million names of God, and could praise them all in seven bell-like steps. Not even angels could keep you down. War Angel, dear Michael, set aside his sword for but a moment of your truth.

I knew then that your end would be tragic - as all perfect things end. Perfection cannot simply fade away... no, it must be ripped away, torn apart...

I never meant to sever.

I never meant to break you.

one buried the sun behind the clouds.
two brought the rain.
three silenced the nightingale from her perfect duet.
four drove away the rich.
five drove away the poor.
six, the angels wept and fled.
and seven was left with no mourning...

... no mourning save a single man - deaf as the world knew him.

He smiled still, knowing nothing of the silenced music, oblivious to the isolation and emptiness. He clapped to an invisible rhythm and stamped his feet to a cadence I could not hear.

So...

I pretended to play and he pretended to listen.