Organ Recital
for Adam
The whole world of music was there beneath
your dancing fingers and your flying feet.
I heard tubas, trombones, foghorns, bells and flutes,
whale songs, birdcalls, clarinets and lutes.
Bassoons, sackbuts, wolves howling at the moon;
The plaintive cries of oboe, owl and loon.
The diapason rumblings deep to deep
were the sighings of subterranean giants lost in sleep.
Then far above the grave-deep decibels
the tiny tintinnabulation of the bells.
I heard from the pipes the sonorous
singing of the stars– the stupendous
sound of planets winding on their way,
and angels’ boisterous trumpets poised to play.
Back to back from tremendous dissonance
surged a messianic magnificence
that gathered up the dark tumultuous tones
and bound them each together all as one.
And then the great Musician fathered forth.
He gathered up your talent and your youth,
and shook them out to show the world,
How your amazing music, bright and bold,
transposed beauty into Truth, and revealed
the intimate, fearful magnitude,
and all-majestic tenderness of God.