…to write a symphony means, to me, to
construct a world with all the tools of
the available technique. The ever-new and
changing content determines its own form.
—Mahler, 1895

I. Slowly, dragging, like a sound of nature.

Moravian plains…dawn…horns and bassoons down below
dawn…

o hello, cuckoos,
hello, bluebells and bugles
in a spring rain

Orpheus strings the wind with the mind’s
night soil and sewage

kling! kling!

o yes, Linnaeus,
“the marsh marigold blows when the cuckoo sings!”

and the sunshine
sings

and the sunshine sings
all things

open

II. Strongly agitated, but not too fast

it’s doubtful whether
rustic Austrian bees,
as described by Professor von Frisch,
dance around
sunny boxwoods so 
stately, so ceremoniously as 
this

but, brown thrashers in dirt, chirping3/4 time—
yes

III. Solemn and measured, without dragging

two blue eyes
two blew ayes
to loose ice…

                         merrily down the
                         merrily verily merrily verily
                         down the stream

                         where la vida
                         es sueño is

                         a dream
                         down the stream
                         under the linden
                         baum

ice, yes, eyes,
streamed

IV. Stormily agitated

the things seen, the
intervals, and the noises
are nature’s, Dr.
Williams:

“Measure serves for us as the key:
we can measure between objects;
therefore we know that they
exist.”

lichens on aspens
seen in green
lightning

the crack of perception isn’t too quick,
the cuckoo’s call is tuned by
adrenal glands,
clouds linked to the world
by lightning and tuning— it cracks the
stones and melts the heart

the cuckoo takes heart, eye-bright
in blue air, lightning

hits it