The Lost Voice

A beautiful, bittersweet poem by my friend Wilf:

THE LOST VOICE (For a dead artist)
In his early days he could charm words
Like birds from a tree
Singing on his lips
Beautiful, meaningless and free,

Songs of wizards and elves
In forests full of fauns
Willow women dancing
Before the noble unicorn,

A guitar strumming
Hand drums drumming
And all the acid folk
Came tripping and running
To the king of the meaningless and free

He could have taken down
His ill fitting crown
He could have learned
He could have turned
Then his songs would have soared
From his heart and strings
To the only
One
True king

But he went down to the fairy woods
And they swallowed him up as fast as he could
A crippled fipple
A neutered flute
A ruined tune
And a voice now mute
Down in the woods
Just splinters and blood

But another song will go on without him
Ten thousand times ten thousand singing
In that new magical dawn
And though there is room in it all for him
And he like everyone is like no one else
Still the the harmony is complete.
The tears that were shed for his lost voice
Cannot diminish this song of praise
And if any dissonance is cast on account of him
God alone could hear

- Wilf, 26th March 2013

Fipple - part of the mouthpiece of a flute or recorder which makes the sound

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