St. Mary Abbots, June 13, 2025
by Theodora Goss

In the nave of St. Mary Abbots,
students from the Royal College of Music
are playing a lunchtime concert —
Schumann, Haydn, and a French composer
named Milhaud, whom I’ve never heard of.
The air smells pleasantly of old pages,
like a used bookstore. Above the altar,
the crucified Jesus and his disciples
listen intently, also enjoying the music.
The saxophone is dripping notes like honey
from the comb, as slow and liquid and sweet.
The violin has turned into a nightingale;
the piano is a river — but wasn’t it always?
The cello is dancing in a magnificent garden,
and now the violins are twin princesses
dressed in white cotton throwing golden balls,
tossing and never failing to catch them.
The clarinet has taught you how to hear
in a new way that does not seem to involve
ears at all. Your fingertips are listening,
and the tip of your nose, and your eyelashes.
Somewhere, mountains are growing.
The stones of the city are vibrating
like violin strings, the clouds have become angels,
and all the people sitting in the pews,
from the old woman with her walker
to a child sleeping in his mother’s lap,
are wearing haloes. Yes, the air smells
like the pages of old books, and the notes
played by the string quartet rise
up to the gothic vault of the church like prayers.

Elsewhere there are wars and children starving
as usual, and even Haydn cannot prevent
the blare of an ambulance in the middle of the adagio.
But here the music goes on, as it did
on the deck of the Titanic — as it always does.

(The image is a painting of St. Mary Abbots by Elizabeth Gladstone.)