"Monteverdi? No one ever sings Monteverdi for me!"

[zirconium]

- Thomas Peck [NYT obit], responding delightedly to my first selection for my Grant Park Symphony Chorus audition



Living Bread


Eleven years later, I'm rehearsing Monteverdi,
Byrd and Palestrina, taking care to ingest the texts
so that, in singing "panis vivus"
my mouth will be rich with the wonder therein.
Eleven years later, I'm not the musician
(not yet) you thought I could become, but what I have managed
to keep comes in part from the whispers and the rants
you hurled at the chorus that hot and lively summer.
Eleven years later, I've even less in confidence
yet sing with far more knowledge, burdened with the silence
of doors I shut precipitately, courses scuttled in haste--
nothing fatal, nothing even truly wasted--
but struggling afresh with pitch and recollecting your kindness,
I promise anew to my future and your ghost:
my voice being made for psalms and stories of love,
I could not choose the substance of the gift
but I can shape it.

(First posted on World AIDS Day 2002. Still true.)

Comments

[athenais]

I absolutely love this poem. A lot of parallels with my singing life.

[zirconium]

I am glad that it resonated with you.