You look up in the cathedral of sound;
A mote from high windows falls in isolation;
It floats compounded down and down,
In a spiral unwound by the pillars’ rotation,
And falls to the continuo, the ground.
A drafty doorway causes a vibrato
And sets the ceiling vault to ring;
Each stone arch, plucked like a string,
Stands in a frozen wave of ostinato.
Thin sheet music flutters on the stands,
And towering chords crush us to the bone;
An edifice is rising to the ear alone,
Here where the structure builder set his plans.