JOHN ORMOND

Organist

Sole village masterof the yellowing manuel,

And market gardener: his sense of perfect pitch

Took in the cracks between the keys.

He was equipped to hear the tiny discord struck

By any weed which innocently mistook

His garden for a place to grow in.

Five days a week John Owen dug and planted,

Potted and weeded, worried

About Saturday's price in Swansea Market

For his green co-productions with God.

Walking to town at dawn, five miles

With Mary ann his wife fluting beside him

(She, as they said, would laugh at her own shadow)

With creaking baskets laden, he nearly deafened

Himself with the noise of his own boots.

Sabbath inside the spade sharp starch

Of his crippling collar he husbanded

On the harmonium aged couplers

And celestes into a grave, reluctant

Order; took no heed in the hymns

Of the congregation trailing a phrase behind,

Being intent and lost in the absolute beat.

But with the years, philosopher as he was,

A Benthamite of music, he set more store

By the greatest harmony of the greatest number.

When, pentecostal, guilts were flung away

Fortissimo from pinnacles of fervour,

When all were cleansed of sin in wild

Innacurate crescendoes of Calvary,

Uncaring, born again, dazzled by diadems

In words of a Jerusalem beyond their lives,

The choristers would stray from the safe fold

Of the true notes. John Owen would transpose

By half a tone in the middle of the hymn

To disguise their collective error,

But sure of the keys of his own kingdom.

He lies long since in counterpoint

With a few stones of earth; Is beyond any doubt

The one angel of the village cloud

Who sings from old notation;

The only gardener there whose cocked ear

Can discern the transgression, the trespass

Of a weed into the holy fields,

If there are weeds in heaven.