! ! Opera Dei- Mozart To The Life Poem by Michael Shepherd

It’s a snapshot, except
before the age of the camera
yet more of a decisive moment
than any posed painting

as any photographer,
lighting director, would see,
he’s next to you, could be
round about the fifth row back
of the stalls; looking so straight ahead
that it doesn’t seem to be
the stage box; and it must surely be
a grand theatre, the lighting’s strong

on his white neck-stock,
his powdered hair, even catching
the lower white of his focussed eye;
he all there, he’s all here, and
attentive as a critic; the opera,
as it surely is, is playing and engages
all his faculties; and yet

there’s an appreciation
holding his lips far from the
childish joke, the poverty, the family deaths,
or even from the unimaginable creation
of music that speaks of something
deep in human hearts, speaks
of something beyond the human heart.

He’s listening to the music
as if he’d never heard it before yet
you can see it’s all inside him, too -
whatever ‘inside’ could mean
to genius;

it’s Mozart, there beside you
as you sketch him, as the
music you’re not watching
as you watch him and your pencil
x-rays your very soul and
finds it wholly good.

So I’d like to thank him
in his celebration, our celebration,
for telling me just what it’s like
to be told in music
what life’s about, and
more.