for Karlheinz Stockhausen
They say Karlheinz asserts
The greatest work of art was when
The 767s destroyed World Trade
But opines that Lucifer
Planned such perfection.
Withdrawing to his citadel
To raise the dust and play with Licht,
With chaos and complexity,
Sporting snow-white jeans
And psychodelic cardigans,
He resonates his synthesisers,
And fills the one café in town
With students and with sympathisers.
Loose talk of seriality
Bewilders local folk -
Twelve chromatic tones in rows
Applied to pitch and tempo,
Timbre and intensity,
Eliminate time and melody;
Harmony gives way to space
Which several orchestras create
And cut across like buzz-saws.
A young boy’s hymn is dipped
In electronic groans
(An enemy declares the piece
Is better than it sounds).
Karlheinz disdains the crowd
Who cringe when helicopters play
The greatest work of art was when
His String Quartet.
Guardian angels guide his ear:
His story speaks of childhood,
Hunting rabbits, fishing trout,
Worshipping cathedral beauty
From his bedroom window,
And then a mother mad,
Butchered by a Nazi dream,
A father who bade his son
Sich allein behelfen
When he left for the eastern front.
Creating notes like particles charged
On slivers of magnetic tape,
Whirrs and scratches wound the air
And lacerate the ear.
Chaos and the catholic faith
Compete in bed together;
Rhythms of dream and space,
Born of fasting, born of hunger,
Run through the Seventh Day.
Sternklang vibrates around a planet
Eight light years agone -
The time it takes for dust to settle
And beauty to scream on.
©Terry Hodgson2020
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