Tanglewood Nights

You move your arms

in anticipation of danger and harmony

a music of gestures born early

to anticipate perhaps a colorful dawn

accompanied by silvery reflections

in the nearby woods

a changed emphasis is on the way

we see it, leaves balancing their moves

while trumpets shiver and violins howl

through dark corners of the past.

They are sitting in the comfort

of their week-end loneliness

perennial hunters lying in wait

scattered all over

the great lawn of music.

Some look like heavy birds

fallen from the sky

others are whales or albatrosses

somnolent silhouettes, short-lived shadows

in love with a meadow, a bush or a flower,

a spear of grass.

When the music ends

(and it never will) they stand up

and walk arm in arm

happy with what they were made to feel

happy that they were able to rejoice

in a heaven they never knew that existed

until tonight…

Along every path in the woods

there is the history of fallen leaves

one that even the old trees remember only faintly

during summer nights of music

when young leaves are becoming acrobats of love

jumping towards the ground

ignorant of their lasting immobility

once they touch the unmovable earth…

luckily, the wind comes to the rescue

engulfing them in a new symphony

a quest of love, like a small passion-hurricane,

at the feet of new lovers

one night, after the music, at Tanglewood…

by Ioan Serban

at Tanglewood Concert Series, 1997