As Western Civilization Passes

on reading a gleeful article in Slate

Grant me, O Lord . . . for nothing earthly, temporal or mortal to long nor to wait.
—Lancelot Andrewes

I listened to Arvo Part
and thought of grass:
wet grass, long, lank and lying
by some way of childhood
with mingled shards of glass
reflecting the serene sky.

I listened to Palestrina
and I heard the sound
of medieval serenity:
the transcendental mass
rising from throbbing throats
already turned to dust.

A symbol arises in the world
like the chaff that the wind
whistles away. The turbulence
of frantic, empty decay
surrounds me in the sound
of a world that has no heart,

No core, no will, no love
to hear the attunement
of Christian ideals
rising in cathedral spaces,
blowing over fields of memory
after the rain has passed.

* * *
Civilization is a symbol
passing to leave monuments,
broken statues, graves
overgrown, and dust behind.

When our failing civilization
is passed and barbarity
has spent itself again
some wise men will study

what is left of it.
And upon these ideals,
that core of silence,
find a measure of repose.

* * *
At the heart of Western Civilization is a long, quiet serenity. Listen to Palestrina, Mozart, Brahms and Arvo Part. The Christian ideal is to seek no home in this world, and in seeking without, Western Civilization has found something settled and eternal at which it gestures within the stream of time. It can be seen by means of that most temporal of arts: music. Music touches on eternity because it must surrender itself to its medium, it must yield itself to time; and only through time is time conquered.

I was listening again to Spiegel Im Spiegel and Fur Alina. The former leaves me always with a sense of forlorn, wet grass and fresh wind: something mingled of loss and hope. I suppose it was a burst of light in 1978. I also think of the mirrors reflecting each other in the interior of an elegant café from the early part of the 20th Century—something melancholy in it, something of the true triumph of those who go in the house of mourning and yet have wisdom which is eternal and must prevail. In the midst of the disintegration of our spent civilization, it seems to me the music of Part offers a core of serenity in the circumstances. Not one that ignores them, but one that has learned the exact measure of indifference such things deserve.