Till now I never understood a word
the songwriters and bards were on about.
Odes, concertos, prose, I thought I heard
with kindred ears, but no, it was without.
My mind was filled with Shakespeare, Dante, Yeats,
my eardrums flooded with Beethoven, Liszt,
Tchaikovsky, Bruckner, Bach and all the greats.
I thought I'd caught their meaning . but I'd missed.
Like painters who can animate mere oil
and make one canvas speak to every age,
so music soars to heaven from the soil
and poets' seed grows pregnant on the page.