Upper Heights And Lower Depths

What heights remain beyond our reach
When dog whistle and tuning fork,
Straining to listen though we may,

Sound notes pitched too high for our ear,
Deserting us yearning to rise,
Freed from the confines of our lives?

Nor can we hear how far below
The scales a crow's cawing might go,
Summoning to a fathomless

Black abyss, as Aeschylus in
His tragedies, at first much too
Profound to be understood with

Such measurelessly dark deep lines
As 'cry sorrow, yet let the good
Prevail, man suffers to grow wise',

Sang the ever-feuding Greeks down
Into the bottomless pit of
A vendetta, till all but drowned

In blood they learnt it's better to,
With many a backward look and fall,
Climb out and up towards the stars.

Graeme Hetherington