Death at the Symphony
Jason Hackett
Please sir,
Yes, you sir,
In the midst of a fit
Acting a twit
I implore
Do sit,
Stop creating such a stir.
Stop bellowing o’er the cello-ing,
Your yelling acoustically echoing,
Your flailing and wailing,
An unwanted accompaniment,
Embarrassingly upstaging.
Obstructing, uncaring,
Everyone staring,
Let me remind you sir,
You are distracting attention,
In need of intervention.
Nonsense for naught!
‘Twas but an innocent mis-seating,
Not intentional mistreating,
I beg of you
Sit down,
Stop your doing.
I came to listen to the symphony
Not the soliloquy of a raving lunatic.
The string quartet is
Visibly, audibly too, upset.
The conductor hissing
At notes going missing.
The violist crying,
The violinist stops trying,
Stands up, bows to the man
And exits impromptu.
An instrumentalist now bereft,
The conductor enraged, impulsively
Flings his baton from stage left.
It shoots through the air like an arrow,
Landing in the man’s upper neck,
At the narrow,
Felling him instantly to death.
A collective gasp befalls
The crowd, then silence
For a long spell,
Eight whole notes to be exact,
A seemingly endless interlude
To preclude the performance
From going further awry.
From a quartet and one man’s marauding
Down to a trio, a death, a collective gasp, silence,
Then, could it be, uproarious applauding.
Yes, uproarious applauding!
People standing and cheering,
Waving their handkerchiefs,
Thankful, tearing,
That the show can finally go on!
On the show does go.
The conductor’s face softens.
Regaining composure
Our composer, a virtuoso
Of the highest order,
Pleased with the dissonance’s removal,
Turns his scoff
To the very note he left off.
Raises his hand, and
Vivace, signals the band.
The notes effortlessly take flight,
Gaining tempo, reprising the night
Onwardly, upwardly,
Brilliantly, flawlessly
Delightfully, height fully they go
Lifting the very moon to this eve’s pinnacle.
We, holding our breaths,
Our stomachs, our chests,
Ride up, up, up
To a symphonic crescendo
The likes of which has never been felt,
Or felt again.
Then, gently back down we are carried,
Into the most heart wrenching finale,
Not a teary requiem,
A hymn to him,
A symphony of poetic justice,
An evening of score evening,
Encored.