The music opens with a blow:
Showers of brass and waves of glare;
The darkness damps the force in rows
Of trembling chairs.
The curtain rises to a false repose:
A lonely melody, a deserted scene;
The singer is hidden within the theme
Whose moment approaches as the movement slows.
A pause;
Nerves taut;
Time in suspension;
Only blind hearing gropes —
Tendrils reach for the opening notes.
Into the maze the score unwinds
Its vertiginous roll
And wends through oscillating lines
Of ease and affliction by design
That intricate rivalries control.
The forces that the arts confine
May guide the courses of the soul,
But those who guide demand in kind
Incomparable toll.