The Ever-Changing Music of Life

There is a well-known series of twelve novels by the British author Anthony Powell, called A Dance to the Music of Time. I've never read any of the books in that series, but the title intrigues me. Earthly time is a series of dances in which our lives are segments. Sometimes life is polyphonic, a complicated fugue in which some phrases stand out and some are less important, and there is a sort of relentless force driving all the voices forward together, disparate as they are. Other times, life is a homophonic 4/4, vertical, its harmonies and rhythms more aligned, ordered—one hesitates to say "predictable," but sometimes it is, whether the tempo is allegro or andante. And then sometimes we find ourselves dancing a slow dance, a sarabande, almost static, but not really—there is always an underlying meter, and we keep moving, even if it's only in a circle—the circular meter of three to the bar.



Sarabande

Nothing-time is a sober pace,
     A solemn sarabande;
Its days step with reluctant grace,
     Yet fear to stop or stand.

Nothing-time has a halting beat,
     As though it hoped to hear
That chord whose consonance so sweet
     Charms even Charon's ear.

Mark the meter, three to the bar,
     But then—there is the rest—
Just space enough to hang a star,
     A quaver, brief but blest.              (March 2008)

 

"Sarabande" © 2008 Leticia Austria. First published in The Eclectic Muse.