Poem
Peter Porter
What\'s Playing in Eternity
What\'s Playing in Eternity
What\'s Playing in Eternity
It must be separate from its maker,his leg-gummata and the sound
of dream’s Beethoven – pure
bullying of all who love
his ‘none-so-great-as-me’ outreach,
while the root position stays
in soul’s retreat from syphilis’s
demi-moral storm. The music,
like Vespasian’s coins, will never smell
of anything behind the foreskin. Time
has told its fractions – use your voice,
this breaking world is crutch enough
to be a scaffold for the nowhere near.
And her inscription of despair
affords a little time to listen:
she was devoted to a more
oblivious obsession, yet some days
there would be space for music
and a favourite piece would play
among the circling furniture,
beyond the deafness of drawn curtains.
Strange that I can see them, stepping from
the record sleeve, three nuns in habits,
inhabiting E Flat,
empowered as angels to command
a truth more generous than love’s.
© 2007, Peter Porter
From: Poetry Review, 97:1
Publisher: Poetry Review, London
From: Poetry Review, 97:1
Publisher: Poetry Review, London
Peter Porter
(Australia, 1929)
Peter Porter was born in Brisbane, Australia in 1929. He moved to London in 1951, and became associated with ‘The Group’ of poets including Martin Bell and Phillip Hobsbaum. Porter worked in bookselling and advertising before becoming a freelance writer and broadcaster in 1968, working for The Observer as poetry critic. In 1999, OUP published two volumes of Porter’s poetry covering the years 19...
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What\'s Playing in Eternity
It must be separate from its maker,his leg-gummata and the sound
of dream’s Beethoven – pure
bullying of all who love
his ‘none-so-great-as-me’ outreach,
while the root position stays
in soul’s retreat from syphilis’s
demi-moral storm. The music,
like Vespasian’s coins, will never smell
of anything behind the foreskin. Time
has told its fractions – use your voice,
this breaking world is crutch enough
to be a scaffold for the nowhere near.
And her inscription of despair
affords a little time to listen:
she was devoted to a more
oblivious obsession, yet some days
there would be space for music
and a favourite piece would play
among the circling furniture,
beyond the deafness of drawn curtains.
Strange that I can see them, stepping from
the record sleeve, three nuns in habits,
inhabiting E Flat,
empowered as angels to command
a truth more generous than love’s.
From: Poetry Review, 97:1
What\'s Playing in Eternity
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