Hymn to a Dying Artist

After writing a Decade, a gladness should pour
So I lift my heart with praise, although
I recall a thought of Kierkegaard,
Who said I’m bereft of weal and so
I hide behind a skilled conductor;
Life’s Master of the anguished allegro,
Embellishing my pain, like a wondrous score.

And while I journeyed, unabated,
Living with Death, Death every day,
Sleeping with all I’ve killed and hated,
The Spirit reassured me and His Voice would say,
“Give meaning to the Memorial you created,
For your Mansion of pain will ink the way
Through corridors of glory, where I have waited.”

Johann Wolfgang, could I enter you while
Your platinum rhymes of each emblazoned hall,
Map the treasures of your night lit aisle?
I espy but a glimpse and can’t travel you all
Where, “Your Excellency,” each Sovereign mile
The men of Psyche and Melody would call,
For your Torch, I pray, to hold awhile.

But Poetasters gnaw at balcony’s edge
With parasitic pride to poison each guest;
Drink the ink of your profane courage!
Then His Voice would hush, “Keep ye vigil, lest,
Like a Mansion desperate for a craftsman’s sage,
Their crimes will murder the Chosen Best;
‘Last Great Hope,’ a Renaissance must rage!”

In the cul-de-sac of my Teutonized Gallery
The alienated phantoms of cobweb dawn,
O’er broadlooms of verse, trudged so thoroughly,
Its iridescence, now forgotten, or gone
As I await the tinting tones of Melody,
When a Hans von Bulow will raise his baton
And shelter me from these halls of melancholy.

While I paint the transcendence of my rebirth
A Tone Poem conceals a darkening Mansion,
For the Torch, I hold not, burns without mirth,
Dissolving my words into a vision;
I abscond from a painful Decade of dearth
Through the path of His Voice of annunciation:
“The world never knew, you, or your worth.”