Fountain Rhythms

Peter ViereckSad

Forgetfully My fountains play Glass symphonies To arm my peace. Such tides efface Such tunes replace An older peace, My other days, Of you the day.

Rebelliously Resounding out Of mountains came Marvel: a shout: "I am the same."

Who is that singing Through my song?

Reluctantly Returns at last Memory, Monody. Wild with a lilt Fountains lack (They never burn), Love turns back, You return: "I waited long; I never changed."

Implacably Your unestranged Unrest came: A shout: "The same!" Out of the mountains Echoing.

How fragilely Now suddenly These arms of glass Grope, grope and miss, Rippling with doubt. Splashed by a shout, These futile fountains Cannot sing.

Peter Viereck

SourceLicence:Public domain (US, unrenewed)

Mood:: Sad
Topics:: love, glass, mountain, song, fountain

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Summary

The speaker has built a calm, glittering peace for themselves, and the fountains are the picture of it. Their "glass symphonies" are pretty, constant and a little forgetful: they drown out an "older peace," the days spent with a beloved, "you the day." But a voice breaks in from the mountains, a shout insisting "I am the same." The speaker is startled enough to ask who is singing through their song.

Memory then returns reluctantly, and with it the love that fountains can't match, since they "never burn." The beloved's words come back: "I waited long; I never changed." Then the shout comes again, "The same!", this time implacable and echoing. By the end the fountains look fragile, their glass arms groping and missing, rippling with doubt. The calm was a cover, and the poem leaves the speaker undone: the water that once sang now "cannot sing." The mood moves from serene to unsettled to quietly devastated.

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