Phalaris

			
Hail, muse, sing soft and lo;
Muse, sweet muse, take these lips:
Sew them fast with lyre strings
So that all straining sings
 
Let no labor break the bind,
But writhing seem a chord
Broken and recombined
 
The air is wet with laughter
The sky, it smiles, too
Uncomfortable, the silence,
When the laughing stops with you.
 
The tyrant king, the maestro,
Prefers the sound of brass
These strings, vocal in affect,
Transformed in this unholy mass
 
The performers, they are waiting
The fire, it is lit,
And all about the square
Families watch and sit
 
Mad fingers play and pluck
To please their tyrant king.
The brazen, braying throat
Knows not the song it sings
But those that hear the song
Hear what they think he’d say
 
Exult in this —
And this alone —
Transform these weak vespers
Into torrential song
Let fall upon the rooftops
And let the street be filled
With the burning wrong.
 
Harmony and counterpoint,
Labored song and writhing pain,
Which is which, all the same
To the brazen ears
Of a braying king
 
Envoi the First:
Such soliloquizing
Undoes the thinking man.
His words symbolizing
More than he had planned.
 
Envoi the Second:
A greater man would see
What words must fail to show;
Insight, the man might say,
Is best when left alone.