Human Harmony

The strings slide easily over the passages repeated.
They have played the part, the rosin on the bowstring
Causing friction, causing sound. It seems it is the cellist,
But it is the bow, and the bow is a poor substitute
For human life, but it will do.

The flutes and reeds are not so lucky.
They cannot separate from their sound.
For the reed must vibrate by cause of human air.
Or is it ere, for the fingers do not slide but
Jerk, missing notes, frantically running passages.

The horns, both French or otherwise, will miss more.
Those lips, only human, changing too much or too little,
Too high or too low, with squeak or squawk or clamour.
For these brave men, the sound depends on them
And they keep quiet, to hide their far-too-human mistakes.

The conductor shouts.
He governs the orchestra, changing it to suit his whim.
He makes adjustments, sometimes better, more often worse.
The orchestra struggles to keep up with his demands
But the conductor is the greatest fault of all.

In the artistic mind, the song has a sound:
A sound unregulated by formulas, parameters or algorithms.
The human division of rhythms is biased: heavy in front, small in back.
To the human ear, ‘A’ may not always be Four-hundred-and-forty Hertz
Or C at Eight-eighty.

It seems the more human, the less perfect.
The society craves perfection.
But what fun would civilization be
without our human harmony?