Harm and Harmony

© 2007 Carl Thomas Gladstone

1,000 cranes breath with the breeze.
One helpful hand removes each from their string,
takes the paper - gray, embroidery -
and rips away, removing wing from wing.

Whose harmony intone will we?
Your careful creases torn away.
They wouldn't care if she played
on the black and whites
but Darcy plays in the gray.

This great divisive perjury succeeds
in lifting out just one offender's smile.
They believe that broken cranes can't sing,
that harm and harmony repel.

Whose harmony intone will we
while pity-looks are all they have to say?
They wouldn't care if she played
on the black and whites
but Darcy plays in the gray.

No, sounding off destruction and the sharp
words that puncture and make flat
our bird, a theologian with her art,
rekindles sacred, worthy songs amid all that.

Whose harmony intone will we?
Bring newfound night to their awful day.
They wouldn't care if she played
on the black and whites
but Darcy plays in the gray.

The myth remains that in the wicked tear
a brokenness, condescendingly inclined,
was born. But strings are filling here and there
with choirs of cranes to question and opine...

Whose harmony intone will we?
How many more will we betray?
They wouldn't care if she played
on the black and whites
but Darcy plays in the gray.

For Darcy