Orchestral Score Poem by Jan Struther

IF only one could read the score of a situation:
Take in with the heart the inevitabilities
Which the mind's eye foresees-
Its hopes, delights and pangs,
Its foredoomed pattern of theme and variation;
Hear the unbearable sweetness and swell of strings,
The halcyon clarinet, the flute's precision,
The lift-heart brass, the brusque emphatic drum,
Quietly within one, like a trained musician
Turning over intricate pages in a silent room:
If only one could read the score of a situation,
And not go to the concert, not have to live it through.