Audience

ALFRED CORN

AUDIENCE

Electric arcs describe your mind,

Casual as it wants to be.

Your sweeping periods toll with light

And draw your subjects through a maze:

Their power flows from this small cell.

It's more a throne-room than a cell,

You say. The bars put you in mind

Of music's polyphonic maze-

Though time, the signature you'd be

Void without, is measured here by light.

Melody's insubstantial light

As air each note a honeyed cell

Golden wholes O harmonic bee

Performed by that collective mind

Dance directing as through a maze

To fragrant rooms that also amaze

With walls finely built for delight

Is intricate no less than mind

Like flowers construed cell by cell

Music takes the shapes we couldn't be

A program that's too rich, maybe,

For every day-but there was a maze

Once, in England. . . . Trapped in a cell

Of privet; and my head went light;

Knew it was sunstroke but didn't mind. . . .

Beamed through a maze of cells the mind

Weighs just more than light let it be