The Submerged Cathedral

(In memory of Phyllis Robinson)

It's an hour before the dawn of rock ‘n’ roll:

Music has not so far been made flesh –

Or not for a working-class girl of thirteen.

And then I watch you play, star graduate

Of James Ching and the Matthay School,

Your technique so physical, so lavish,

I’d call it, now, l’écriture féminine

For pianists: but in 1958

All I know is that you are what you’re playing –

You’re playing La Cathédrale Engloutie.

A camera's drawn to the concert pianist's hands,

Caressing octaves, palely capering –

Sunday Palladium stuff, with Russ Conway

Or Winifred Atwell (coos from the mums and dads),

To be filed under my new word: Philistine.

This is art so deep it's industry:

Music as white-water, which your spine

Channels, springing arms transform. That's how

You lift and tumble these ton-weights of bell power:

I watch you, not your hands. I watch the sea,

Out of my depth, though, like La Cathédrale.

I mean all this to last – the eight hours’ practice

Each day, hopeless devotion – and it does –

In other contexts. Oh, I bury it,

Music, and you, and all the pain of childhood,

But lumber back like a medieval builder

With washed-up stones (some good stone, too) and prayers,

To raise another heaven-touching marvel

On the same flood-site, watch another tide

Swagger in and demolish every bit.

After the last wreck, when I’d declared

The end of building-works on any coast,

Strange bells began to ring for me, the tone

Rubbed ordinary by forty years, but true:

Ghostly but not damned. What if the ghost

Wryly sang, ‘Promises, promises?’

It was a gentle challenge, after all.

The sacred stones were myth. The tide that reared

So vengefully, hauled by the same moon,

Was myth. Not so, my common ground with you.