Intermission

by Danny Naumov

The metronome ticks like a hammer – Its wooden confines cracking, as the theater dimmed to a shattering applause of windows breaking.
The humming of the choir garrisoned an organ of roughly one hundred and eighty tunes, flue pipes propped against the wall and ready to shoot truth like rifles.
Only God can judge their swan song echoing through the hallways of the court, reverberating on the truth that pleads the case of their morale standing on high ground.
At four the audience gets silent. The conductor in dispute with the composer. The mutineer stops the engine, eavesdropping: Silence filled with tremors of anticipation.
On the seventh count, the overture of the second act begins, governed by another conductor of metallic crotchets with mismatched reed pipes to another song.

Reproduced with kind permission of the author. This poem was composed in a Poetry as Commemoration workshops led by Dr. Jessica Bundschuh in University of Stuttgart in 2023.

This poem was inspired by Poblacht na h-Eireann War News, No. 1 from UCD Special Collections featured in the Poetry as Commemoration Document Pack 2022/2023.