Fauré

Take me aboard your barque, where the valuable water

Mirrors the perfect passage of the dove.

Over the glittering gulf the sun burns whiter

The charts of envy and the reefs of love.

Lost in the frosty light the desperate hunter

Hurls his black horn-note on the wrecked château

Where in despair the signalman of winter

Winds on its walls the flashing flags of snow.

I see (captured my caravel) the stolen city

Falling like Falcon to the cunning bay.

The holy sea, unmerciful and mighty,

Strides with the tide its penance all the day.

Fling like a king your coin on the clear passage

Bribing the sea-guard and the stumbling gun.

On the salt lawn scribble your last message

Rallying the rout of ice on the storming sun.

CHARLES CAUSLEY

Fauré in Paris, 1924

Nearing eighty, Fauré has found the end

of sound. He never would have guessed

it had so much to do with the Mediterranean

light of childhood, or lake breezes swirling

all summer at Savoy, and so little to do

with music growing quieter everywhere

but in his mind. He is relieved to hear

the garbled edge of what had been music,

his torment for twenty years, fading at last

to silence. If only his breath would follow!

He believes he is finished with the flesh,

his face now thin and delicate as a lost note

dissolving in air, his body closing in

on itself, the discordant coda to a life

of elegance and song. He would become

spirit instead, simple and radiant at the level

of pure grace, diaphanous against nightfall.

He hoards his bare, inner music and must

force himself to reduce it to notes on a page.

Alone, deaf to street noise below, the call

of birds above, seeing the Paris sky glazed

with loud sunlight, he feels wrapped

in melody's softest shroud. It is exquisite,

as he always knew it must be, and almost

liquid in the way it lifts him toward the clouds.