for Alan Gillmor
An ecumenical crowd,
our heads mostly balding or grey, bowed in reverence
before Brahms or Schubert, otherwise alert
to every nuance or missed note, we gather each July
for a buffet of chamber music,
all-you-can-hear in twelve days,
a hundred and ten items on the concert menu, served up hot
in sundry airless churches.
Meanwhile in the USA
as bodyguards swarm convention halls, ‘credible intelligence’
about impending attacks on New York or Washington
raises the stakes to orange, depresses the markets.
Yet here we are oblivious, fleeing office blocks at noon
for a quick swig at a Bach cantata or four part harmonies
in Christ Church Cathedral. We have no illusions that even
the Canadian Brass could bring down
the walls of Jericho or Manhattan’s Babel towers.
As for police sharpshooters here, or razor wire,
forget it: we have retained
Beethoven, Mozart, Dvorak
to provide our security.
– Christopher Levenson
