My musings on my pianistic place in the world call to mind a well-known E.E. Cummings poem. (I see it all over the internet, on reputable sites, with no copyright notice, so I conclude it’s OK to post here in its entirety.) Reading it as a kid in New England, I assumed Cummings was thinking of some village church in New Hampshire or Western Massachusetts, much like the venues of the majority of my Vermont concerts. Which would have been perfect, but apparently it was inspired by the photo below of Saint-Germain-de-Charonne, a church in an outer arrondissement of Paris.
i am a little church(no great cathedral)
far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying
– i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,
i am not sorry when sun and rain make april
my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;
my prayers are prayers of earth’s own clumsily striving
(finding and losing and laughing and crying)children
whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness
around me surges a miracle of unceasing
birth and glory and death and resurrection:
over my sleeping self float flaming symbols
of hope, and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains
i am a little church(far from the frantic
world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature
– i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;
i am not sorry when silence becomes singing
winter by spring, i lift my diminutive spire to
merciful Him Whose only now is forever:
standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence
(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)
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