Poetry Pleases: Unfinished Symphony
In this deeply moving poem Joyce Worsfold tells of the power of music on a little girl. And if this doesn't make you feel better about the world, nothing will
Lisa had a temper
Lisa banged doors
Lisa hated everyone
Lisa had claws.
Everyone moaned about Lisa
She drove everyone spare
Every lesson was boring
Lisa just didn’t care.
She sang loudly through literacy hour
And chanted obscenities at break
Her prowess at fighting gave power
But in lessons she was hardly awake.
There’s Beethoven playing on Radio 3
Mendelssohn, Mussorgsky and Bach
There’s a Hockney exhibition that interests me
And at Stratford, Julius Caesar and Joan of Arc
But none of it matters to Lisa
And probably it never will
Unless someone learns how to please her,
Breaks the spell and allows talent to spill.
We tried to teach her the recorder
Mixed powder paint and gave her a brush
She punched and thumped out of order
And gave Marvin and Gavin a push.
Then…
On a cold day in May they came to play
A string quintet…
They opened their cases,
tuned up and played
And I watched the faces
as the music swelled.
Lisa was listening, Lisa enthralled,
Lisa was glowing, each instrument called.
Cadences trembled, soaring, sweet
Musette and minuet fell at her feet.
Goosebumps raised on tingling flesh
Violin and viola intermingle and mesh.
The slow, low tones, rich and mellow
Lisa is longing to draw bow on cello.
“A whole class of kids learn the violin?
Can you imagine the chaos and din?
Kids like these just need to count and to read
You’ll be wasting your time, like teaching the creed.’’
“But what if there’s a Kennedy or Menuhin
lurking in year four or five?
What if there’s a foetus growing
That will never come alive?’’
“They can sing, can’t they, play recorder or hum
There’s a limit to what can be done
In the National Curriculum.’’
Nevertheless, we got what we needed… eventually.
Cases lay open, violins gleaming like chestnuts in shells
Children were hushed as they waited for their music to swell
They learned correct stance
And made their bows dance
Fingers placed firmly on strings
They learned which was which
And just how to switch
Between notes, then their music had wings.
And Lisa?
Well she had the cello
She sat and she hugged it tight
And learned to make music, not bellow
And her eyes when she played were so bright.
She wrote a poem about it later
It didn’t rhyme or scan, alliterate or simile
It simply said
“The cello is cool, it makes a sad sound
And the person who’s playing is me.’’
