parable

Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin
(1872 -- 1915)

Alexander's eyes rarely moved.
They hung in a lowered gaze,
fixed on miracles he could see
moving beyond and within him.

Alexander's mother played piano.
She was talented, and the boy
lay under the piano absorbing.
Form and melody and harmony --
mixed liquidly behind early eyes --
sank strange colors into whirlpools.

Alexander must be music, and that is all.
What was latent became heard, known.
Rubles squeezed from time later flowed.

Someone flabbergasted realized music
walked the world in quaint human form.
Someone terrified that music was alive
yet might not reach many melting ears.

Alexander was music, and that is all.
So lift a crystal toast to his publisher:
Mitrofan Petrovich Belyayev...to you!

The end.

Copyright 2011 -- Tim Buck