812. Ode To Arnold Schoenberg - Charles Tomlinson

Ode To Arnold Schoenberg On a Performance of His Concerto for Violin

At its margin
   the river's double willow
       that the wind
variously
   disrupts, effaces
       and then restores
in shivering planes:
   it is
       calm morning.
The twelve notes
   (from the single root
       the double tree)
and their reflection:
   let there be
       unity––this,
however the winds rout
   or the wave disperses
       remains, as
in the liberation of the dissonance
   beauty would seem discredited
       and yet is not:
redefined
   it may be reachieved,
       thus to proceed
through discontinuities
   to the whole in which
       discontinuities are held
like the foam in chalcedony
   the stone, enriched
       by the tones' impurity.
The swayed mirror
   half-dissolves
       and the reflection
yields to reflected light.
   Day. The bell-clang
       goes down the air
and, like a glance
   grasping upon its single thread
       a disparate scene,
crosses and recreates
   the audible morning.
       All meet at cockcrow
when our common sounds
   confirm our common bonds.
       Meshed in meaning
by what is natural
   we are discontented
       for what is more,
until the thread
   of an instrument pursue
       a more than common meaning.
But to redeem
   both the idiom and the instrument
       was reserved
to this exiled Jew––to bring
   by fiat
       certainty from possibility.
For what is sound
   made reintelligible
       but the unfolding word
branched and budded,
   the wintered tree
       creating, cradling space
and then
   filling it with verdure?