Rehearsing for the Final Reckoning in Boston

During the Berlioz Requiem in Symphony Hall

which takes even longer than extra innings

in big league baseball, this restless Jewish agnostic

waits to be pounced on, jarred by the massed fanfare

of trombones and trumpets assembling now in the second

balcony, left side, right side, and at the rear.

Behind them, pagan gods in their niches

acoustically oversee this most Christian

of orchestrations: the resting Satyr

of Praxiteles, faun with infant Bacchus,

Apollo Belvedere, Athena, Diana

of Versailles with early greyhound.

When the wild mélange cries out

Dies irae, all of our bared hearts pulse

under Ozawa's baton. He is lithe as a cat,

nimble as Nureyev, another expatriate.

But even Ozawa dressed in white sweats

cannot save us up here in peanut heaven, or save

patrons downstairs in the best seats canted back

for the view, who wear the rapt faces of the fifties

tilted to absorb the movie on the 3-D screen.

Naught shall remain unavenged, sings the chorus.

What trembling there shall be when we rise again

to answer at the throne. That's all of us

since Adam, standing on one another's shoulders

three or four deep, I should imagine,

acrobats of the final reckoning.

And what terror awaits those among us

whose moral priorities are unattached

to Yahweh, Allah, Buddha, Christ:

forgiving without praying for forgiveness,

the doing unto others, scrubbing toilets,

curbing lust, not taking luck for granted?

Are the doubters reckoned up or just passed over?

Hector was almost passed over, his Requiem

unplayed, save for a general killed in battle …

How should one dress for the Day of Judgment?

At a working rehearsal the chorus is motley,

a newborn fin de siècle in t-shirts and jeans.

But what will they wear when the statues have crumbled

in 2094? Brasses and massive tympani close

the Lacrymosa. Metallic spittle is hot in my throat.

Now we enter the key of G major, the Lamb

of God key of catharsis and resolution.

Like a Janus head looking backward and forward,

pockmarked by doubt I slip between cymbals

to the other side of the century where our children’s

children's children ride out on the ranting brasses.