"Where ignorant armies clash by night…"
Refined and elegant, Bach's keyboard
counterpoints the elements -
a tropic cloudburst closing in
on ivory and ebony,
ricocheting off the eaves
and lacquered Asiatic leaves,
dripping from rosettes of bright
hibiscus, laying siege to art,
where prelude, fugue and lamplit
window meet encroaching dark…
With muffled, martial rumbling
of kettledrums, and rain-tipped pikes,
clouds swagger like the armies of the night
across forbidding skies,
until storm's minions fade away,
while Samuel Feinberg's ghostly hands
unerringly pursue their quest
beyond chaos to eloquence, and usher in
the presence of an honoured guest.
Epigraph from Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach"