Observations placeholder
Hawkes, Jacquetta - Symbols and Speculations - Instruments
Identifier
021778
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
INSTRUMENTS
[In 1648 all ballad singers were arrested and vast numbers of organs, lutes, viols, harpiscons, flutes and theorbos were destroyed.)
The metal dragonfly with clittering wing-
Invisible bow upon invisible string-
Draws long blue notes; a host of grasshoppers,
Hair-sprung, green-elbowed fiddlers, where I pass
Gay minor music spill among the grass.
The high, hasped limb, bright membrane, brittle plate-
All that is many-jointed, ancient, intricate;
The violin-slender waist, the enormous gaze-
Fantastic insect world, no human wit
Had fantasy enough to fashion it.
Yet form recalls form, I see the viol and lute
Their delicacy broken, trampled by a brute.
Thin, splintered wood, the curling silent string
As though an ox had crushed and rendered mute
Grasshopper, dragonfly, with gross senseless foot.
Soon man must perish of his joylessness
Cleansing earth's flesh of its scabbed consciousness.
Then on frail bodies, unheeded, heedlessly
Gay on a globe where cities turn to grass
This dragonfly will play, and these green grasshoppers.