Echoes Infinite
by Odin Roark

Some believe
Sound is eternal,
That its waves
Cease to stop,
Even after rippling
Beyond volitional perception.

History claims…

Post-primitive beginnings
Bore the ethereal sounds
Of harps and flutes,
Lyres and bamboo pipes,
Five and seven tone scales,
Sumerian hymns,
Greek chorals and rhapsode,
Pythagoras’s introduction of octaves,
Aulos and citharas becoming precursors
To Aristotle’s foundation of musical theory,
Aristoxenes’ rhythm as tripartite,
On and on.

Today’s digital sound…

Eerily resounds
With technology’s immortality
Preserving our cosmic life force
The emotional blood flow
The DNA of lyrical and dissonant sound
Passed through centuries of evolution’s
Mutation,
Transition,
Metamorphosis,
And even digression.

Listen…

To hear antiquated vibrations of
Hominid caves,
Ancient Egypt,
Greece,
And China,
Is to understand infant cries,
Toddler frustration,
Child and adolescent temperament,
Musicality’s kinship and respect
For primal beginnings,
Unavoidable ways
Tonal language found
Its voicing
Its boundless vibration.

To hear such gifts...

Is to feel the mathematics of Bach
The pomp of Mozart,
Lonely atonal explorations of Cage,
Pioneering Americana of Copeland,
Melancholy’s Satchmo,
Urban’s story of Bernstein’s West Side,
Collector-pride for Beatle mania,
Brubeck’s contrapuntal magic,
Coltrane’s frenetic social-purge,
Poetry’s rappers
Sentiment’s country style
And especially…
In-your-head-and-won’t-stop
Mellifluent melodies.

To know of this legacy
Is to hear forever
The echoing breath of time,
Perpetuity’s indomitable respiration,
The forever-tickling of musical invention.

Enjoy