POEMS/ Reflections on Fauré’s Requiem

Reflections on Fauré’s Requiem
He wrote it for a pilot burned alive in a steel cage,
a four year old who nursed her mother dying
of Ebola, child left alone deserted, without hope,
for the occupants of shattered homes in Gaza, Iraq, Ukraine,
for victims of school shootings, drowned emigrants,
the thousands riding on the “train of death” through Mexico,
searching for a better, safer life, held for months
in camps on the border of the new world they sought;
he wrote it offering comfort in the music’s opening
to the light, Luceat eis, its breathless crescendos,
soft diminuendos, its dialogue of instruments and voices,
hum of the cellos, salutation of the trumpets,
urgent calling of the oboe, lilting soprano of the Pie Jesu,
tenor’s soft rise and fall in the Agnus Dei,
in the joyous exaltation of the promise, of life
reborn in music, transcending for a time
all pain and sorrow –
and he wrote it for poets, knowing that when we listen
to find the right words for what we hear and feel,
we sing the music that lives and burns inside us.
©Phyllis Beck Katz, 2015
He wrote it for a pilot burned alive in a steel cage,
a four year old who nursed her mother dying
of Ebola, child left alone deserted, without hope,
for the occupants of shattered homes in Gaza, Iraq, Ukraine,
for victims of school shootings, drowned emigrants,
the thousands riding on the “train of death” through Mexico,
searching for a better, safer life, held for months
in camps on the border of the new world they sought;
he wrote it offering comfort in the music’s opening
to the light, Luceat eis, its breathless crescendos,
soft diminuendos, its dialogue of instruments and voices,
hum of the cellos, salutation of the trumpets,
urgent calling of the oboe, lilting soprano of the Pie Jesu,
tenor’s soft rise and fall in the Agnus Dei,
in the joyous exaltation of the promise, of life
reborn in music, transcending for a time
all pain and sorrow –
and he wrote it for poets, knowing that when we listen
to find the right words for what we hear and feel,
we sing the music that lives and burns inside us.
©Phyllis Beck Katz, 2015