Mahler's 8th

Veni! it begins. Veni, Creator
Spiritus! Because it always seems to do
The job, I'm stingy with my talisman.
Romeo and Juliet will jump-start me
Most days. Mahler's 8th is for emergencies,
When nothing less than heaven's massed chorus
Will serve the purpose.

He went each summer
To the mountains, high as he could get, and wrote
A symphony. So I recall having read
And do believe. High altitudes have that effect.
Even the Poconos, so much lower than
The Alps, exert an influence, and I am
Feeling it. Again.

And again the wood thrush
That haunts my rented glade insists I am,
As he, the Spirit's willing slave. He sings,
Exactly as the Field Guide says, Ee-o-lay
(With occasional, distinctive, guttural notes)
And so much else besides, flutelike and
Rounder than other thrushes, and I awake
At four A.M. and can't go back to sleep
For the glory of it.

Why does the wood thrush
Sing such songs, while other birds still sleep?-
Unless it is he sings because there's music
In him. Not some territorial claim,
Not some dumb desire, but an instinct co-equal
With ours, and no less unaccountable,
To achieve beauty and inhabit it.

What that music may mean he knows no more
Than I or John Keats or John Keats' nightingale
Or Mahler on his mountaintop. We all
Are equal in our innocence. The dawn
Glimmers and we respond in kind.

It's six
P.M., and that amazing bird is still at it.


-- Thomas M. Disch