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NEW POEM BY TODD SWIFT II


COMPOSED DURING A CHORAL RECITAL IN LONDON
 
 
I have gone further out of myself

Than music allows

Setting words to music

Is a barbarism

You do not plate gold

On gold

The sheen overdoes

Creation

This voice exceeds time

Which does end

Despite oceanic claims.

I am beyond myself

In brightness

Of suntime and daynight.

Overcrowd this lucid vault

For a choir is born

Without fault

For Christ to listen to

On his return.

Which cannot happen

While time loiters

In the antechambers

Of the moon. I am a style

Happening to you

Despite your refusals

As if a god took you for

His own enjoyments

In a feathering triggerpoint

Of lit rage. Stage set

We die of plague to rise

With buboes drained

Pretty as the babe

Who all ovations bow to

In choral nazarenes of flow.

I raise a vocal range

Mountainous as Mars

To say you need no addition

When a lyric full throat

Takes on the freight

Of stars and plains and seas.

There is no green greener than

The sung span of your own

Boygirl tongue of fiery peace.
 
 
March 2015, London
Todd Swift
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