There Are Also Musicians.

There Are Also Musicians

by Michael Coady

Though there are torturers in the world

There are also musicians.

Though, at this moment,

Men are screaming in prisons,

There are jazzmen raising storms

Of sensuous celebration,

And orchestras releasing

Glories of the Spirit.

Though the image of God 

Is everywhere defiled,

A man in West Clare

Is playing the concertina,

The Sistine Choir is levitating

Under the dome of St. Peter's,

And a drunk man on the road

Is singing, for no reason.

The power of music is an unmitigated one, constantly reinventing itself, molding and folding and empowering - affecting a single soul for a moment, or legions of souls for lifetimes.  When words cannot comfort you and reason can't sustain you, music is an offering to the Divine Conductor, a jaunt through His unwritten orchestrations.  It can give purpose without meaning, or meaning without purpose, as you close your eyes and feel the conduit between heaven and earth, present and past and future.  It's just...glorious.

Images: LCT - Street Musicians in Boulder, CO. 1999; shorpy.com, blind fiddler and musicians from 1935