Organ Concert Inside St. Peter’s in Munich
Vibrations illuminate
stained glass scenes
of another world.
750: monks
lived around an older chapel
on this hill.
Trills spread from arches,
perfect geometry —
statues almost sway
in tidal waves of ecstasy.
1901: Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov
became Lenin a few miles away
on Schleissheimer Strass.
Each note wakes a tree
in the forest within.
Chords stitch shards
into a shimmering mirror.
1913: Hitler resided nearby
on the same street as Lenin.
Resounding harmonies
build a ladder
to a longed for beyond.
1944: the church bombed,
nearly destroyed. Rebuilt
over fifty-five years,
golden statues against endless white.
Thundering themes make an ocean,
each of us a ship sailing hope and fear.
The steeple’s view
encompasses
the entire city,
on the horizon
the Alps.
A graveyard of history
A pulsing womb for tomorrow.
About the author:
Yun Wang’s poetry books include “The Book of Mirrors” (White Pine Press, 2021), “The Book of Totality” (Salmon Poetry Press, 2015), and “The Book of Jade” (Story Line Press, 2002), as well as a book of translation, “Dreaming of Fallen Blossoms: Tune Poems of Su Dong-Po” (White Pine Press, 2019), and the translation of Dao De Jing (the Daoist scripture) as poetry (in collaboration with Li-Young Lee, W.W. Norton 2024). Wang is a cosmologist at California Institute of Technology, focusing on developing NASA space missions to explore the Universe.
In the artist’s words:
Patrick McEvoy has had stories included in various comic book anthologies. In addition, short plays he wrote were performed at various festivals such as the Players Theater SPF and the Dream Up Festival, among others. Photography has also appeared in Tiny Seed Literary Journal, Molecule, riverSedge and Good Works Review.
Such a joy to see and read this poem once again.
Yes, fabulous poem by a gifted poet.