The Aeolian Syndrome Poem by Michael Galvin

Their lyres remember
the tender current,
the ribbed arches,
the torn king's flesh,
this blind voyage.

They’re giftedly unlearned in the way
nerve-endings lose beginnings,
refusing to forego the first
simplicity by imagining there is more
than one place, or less than one completion,
and their hearts are lifted on the music of adoring.

Therefore their melodies are tuned
experimentally in shells full of water and of air;
forgotten presence threads improvisations
full of love for the multitude of living,

until the unexpected
strums with severed fingers,
and the lyre stills, undefended.