Music, No Programme Notes Poem by Ananta Madhavan

When I began my tour in Europe as a youth,
I wished to listen to its music. I bought an LP record
On a friend's advice and heard the sounds of
Beethoven's famous Fifth Symphony in C minor:
Ta-ta-ta-Taaa, a haunting four-bar motif,
Imagined by a genius in 1807 perhaps.
It was a phrase familiar to listeners
As Fate knocking at the door.

Though diverted by that idea,
I disliked it and wanted to retort,
"Why not imagine that four-beat theme
Of short-short-short-long
As the Doorknob knocking at Fate? "

I could liken it to an aural rhythm
Of a railway engine steaming into
A station platform, with its
Pistons grinding powerfully.

Music expresses non-verbally
Those ineffable, fraction-feelings
We do not pause to name or acknowledge.

Dada is the saving straw
Of the drowning intellect perhaps.