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 



 

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