The Songs They Sang

Long ago, God made the world,
Released it to the universe
And let it spin in circles -
But didn’t let it fly too far:
She lingered by its side
And kept an eye upon it.

She heard the songs
The ancients sang:
Hope and prayer
In dulcet tones,
Harmonies carefully arranged;
Rumination set to rhyme;
Rhythm of the beating heart
And heartache sung
In counterpoint;
Wonderment in words and notes
Conceived in loss and ecstasy;
Tapestries of suffering;
Threads of hope and prayer
Woven through the melody;
Chants and incantations;
Rising prayer arpeggios;
Joy in voice and love in song
Rose through heaven’s air,
Resounded through Her consciousness:
God found peace
Within those songs,
Beauty in the confluence
Of sound and sadness
Sewn together.

Not so today;
The songs that people sing
Are better left unsung;
The lyrics have no meaning
And the melodies are cold;
Modern scales are fragile,
Too weak to bear
The weight of words
And those of recent vintage
Are tepid and irrelevant;
There is no sense or sanctity
In notes and phrases
Thrown together,
Quite unlike the songs
That people sang so long ago
When the world was in its infancy.

The orbit of the earth
Has fallen far below
The floor of Heaven;
Rarely does God listen
But when She does,
She sits unmoved
By those who sing
Through force of habit
Or obligation:
There is no splendor
In sound and word
When the soul of song
Is missing.

Walter Weinschenk is an attorney, writer and musician. Until a few years ago, he wrote short stories exclusively but now divides his time equally between poetry and prose. Walter's writing has appeared or is forthcoming in a number of literary publications including Lunch Ticket, The Carolina Quarterly, The Worcester Review, Sand Hills Literary Magazine, Meniscus, Waxing and Waning and others. He is the author of "The Death of Weinberg: Poems and Stories" (Kelsay Books, 2023). More of Walter's work can be found at walterweinschenk.com.