Ode to Joy
J. Quinn Brisben
That powerful tune first entered my mind
In a plain frame church with the words
“Grant us wisdom, grant us courage” and
Others I long since forgot. Then I recall
Picking it out again from one of my first
Long-playing records, splendid disks
Of Toscanini conducting Beethoven’s Ninth.
And I recall identifying the theme driving home
In a van full of wheelchairs after one more
Tilt at the windmills of Washington in 1982,
And most memorably in Spanish with bongos
In Havana with an orchestra and chorus of
Inmates at a psychiatric hospital in 1993,
Forging an unbreakable comradeship.
Last night in the music shell named for
Labor’s great Petrillo it was preceded
By Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw,
Smashing, then re-imagining the old ways
In memoriam to the victims of the reaction
Against the great enlightenment of which
The Choral Symphony is a jagged peak.
Beethoven follows Schoenberg with no break,
The tone rows merging into open fifths
As I looked at the almost full moon
And saw the rabbit of the Maya and the Japanese
And the man that Schoenberg and Beethoven saw
Both together. And I heard under the low strings
The lowering traffic of the Outer Drive and sharp
Whistling signals in Grant Park and a rude
Motorcycle gunning, but Beethoven has more power,
More power even than the silent, gliding jetliners
Descending, as the Ode to Joy theme slowly rises
And courses through the veins like subtle liquor.
And finally the baritone and chorus break out
And the quartet soars over the chorus
And the vaulting soprano soars over all,
Making the Grant Park thousands one, those
Who see the rabbit and those who see the man,
From Pill Hill, Skokie, London Towne, and Phoenix,
All exalted in the great affirmation.
