Sonnet

Music is a strange and useless thing.
It doesn't offer cover from the storm.
It doesn't (really) ease the sting
of living; nor nourish us, nor keep us warm.
And men expend their lives in search of sound,
learning how to juggle bits of noise,
and by their swift illusions to confound
the heart with fleeting and evasive joys.
Yet I am full of quaking gratitude
that this exalted folly still exists,
that in an age of cold computer mood,
a piper still can whistle in the mists.
His notes are pebbles falling into time.
How sweetly mad it is, and how divine.

Gene Lees