Holy Melody

“It is sweet to dance to violins

When love and life are fair:

To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes

Is delicate and rare:

But it is not sweet with nimble feet

To dance upon the air!”

― Oscar Wilde

Rebbe Nachman says: “If you sing the right melody.. One

melody can bring peace to the whole world...”

Reb Shlomo Carlebach

In music there is connection,

in music there is hope,

in music there is refuge.

Let me in please!

into your secrets,

those harmonics that expose the divine,

let me taste the fruits of the keys

and the honey of the clefs.

In those dark notes are buried

secrets of the universe,

those strings of reverberation

upon which the planets move

and the same strings in which the heart

vibrates to, in sympathy.

Let me be moved

by your genius,

by those devotees and composers

who sacrificed all at the altar of your muse

worshipping at the feet of your cellos

in harmony and counterpoint.

Don’t let me surrender to my mother’s curse

who cannot listen for the pain of it.

She, who suffered to master the Beethoven and

Mendelssohn concertos

cannot hear the music for the trauma.

Open my broken heart to its healing waves.

Your craft reflects both the exalted shores of all

as well as the depths of despair,

for your instruments vibrate

a counterpoint of secret potions

where the world can be felt,

in a crucible of alchemical mixtures;

good and bad,

agony and ecstasy,

empathy and sorrow.

It is truly sweet to dance to violins

even when “life is unfair”!

for the only respite for me

in this bloody pain

is your holy melody.

Never will I forget the Verracini Largo

or the Halverson Passacaglia

as I lay in bedded agony

the moments I could drown out

the noisy pain

by the heavenly sound of the violin and cello

playing as if making love.

They kept my spirits floating

despite the monster in the depths below.

So homage will I pay

to the muse herself

and hand on this holy craft to those little fingers

in this 5 year old angel

who masters the do-re-me

and feels each session

as a triumph.