SOUNDSCAPE

SOUNDSCAPE

The music of ‘wellness’
Washed clean of all colour
Plays out its servitude
In the glass lift 
Boards of directors having concluded
That calm can be conjured
From shallow waters 
The panic of thought 
Contained by the bland

Corporate music 
Oils the transactions
Of profit and loss 
Caresses the ankles
Of greed and desire 
Wraps up the senses in
Wall-to-wall feel-good 
Till the soul caves in
And clicks on ‘buy’

The music of empire
Descends its full bombast
To cover the lie 
Drowns the lone voice 
Calling out in the desert 
With brass, fife and drum
Falls in with the goosestep 
And charts out the score 
Of the screenplay of war 

There is a music 
That autocrats fear
So they hang from the trees
Broken-skinned drums
Lyres ripped of their strings
To scare off the doves
Lock up toothless pianos
To moulder in sorrow and
Smother the underground railway 
Of song

The music of life
Woven into the helix
The beat of the breast 
The rim of a glass
The chop of an axe
The drip from an icicle
Echoes from canyon to glacier
Sounds the sea floor 

Lifts the heart into space 
Past flying debris 
To where atoms converse
With harmonics which bend
Perfect imperfection
Beyond calculation
Wild limitless voyage
Through question and resolution

And grounds it again
In the blue green earth
As we look at each other 
Breathless, wide-eyed
Complicit in hope

Our lives play the music
Of the masters we serve