(“At the climax of our performance, a lot of shouting yobs broke into the church.”)
Peace, disquiet, discrepancy,
The lot of varying concerns
Are melodiously moved
Within this ordered orchestra
Watching the concerns
Of a baton waved by an amateur.
Outdoors, in the pale evening,
Louts gather and grey
The paving stones with
Enormous efforts of flob. These,
Rubbed down by heels outside
A grotesque, well-frequented eating-house,
Contrast with the ordered
Ineptitude of the amateurs
Making a mistaken
Melody out of the impulse
To spit; but then chafed
Bully-boys descend
To overwhelm, at disaster’s bend,
Poor effort, like distant
Undefined musicians making
No melody but noise
Of fists and broken bottles, wails,
The incredible glory
Of gory, techno-autocratic
Scientific, murky malaise,
Making this direction plausible
Upon the church stones’
All-encompassing sin.
Better to be amateurs
To the catastrophic composers
Than experts whose despair
Makes bloody execution
Out of the obstreperous
And polluted air!