Concerto Poem by Anneke Brassinga

If with shawms, gullet-pipe and loud warbling
the struck-up tuneful tumult praising our
anguished existence gets lost in the foulness,
fullness of the street - if among dust and stench
from throat and tooting brass tenuous songs well up,
sweet-scented sound-froth fanciedly inspired by
the milky-way fanfare that bursts out in worlds of
a more ethereal nature, then there is still something
by which we are clean lovely beasts.

Translation: John Irons