Something Like a Star

I've been so silent this past

week or so:

the world of work

and the world of the world

has been far too much with me

these days; they have

invaded my brain with riff-raff and garbage,

with a pettiness that produces

dullness

and interferes with any attempt

to directly experience

love, life and language.

(Dear internet friends, don't leave me!

I'm here; I really am, and soon enough

I'll be finished with my semester!)

The absence of sun these days too,

and unexpectedly Chilly Spring Days

have frozen that dullness

into a seemingly insurmountable

wall of ice.

I have been in desperate need of a thaw.

Yesterday, I got a bit of one,

in the form of a poem set to music

in which I had the distinct pleasure of singing.

I'm not in this version of it,

but a version of it it is --

Randall Thompson's choral version

of Robert Frost's 

Choose Something Like a Star:

(may it help thaw you, too):

Choose Something Like a Star

(by Robert Frost)

O Star (the fairest one in sight),
We grant your loftiness the right
To some obscurity of cloud --
It will not do to say of night,
Since dark is what brings out your light.
Some mystery becomes the proud.
But to be wholly taciturn
In your reserve is not allowed. 

Say something to us we can learn
By heart and when alone repeat.
Say something! And it says "I burn."
But say with what degree of heat.
Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade.
Use language we can comprehend.
Tell us what elements you blend. 

It gives us strangely little aid,
But does tell something in the end.
And steadfast as Keats' Eremite,
Not even stooping from its sphere,
It asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.