(Apologies to Listers and Sappho)

"I loved thee once dear Gustav long ago."

Your many melodies linger in my heart
Your ferocious climaxes--a joy to behold.
But time is shortening ere I must depart
And repetition has made your favors old.

No work of yours can be perfection now to me.
No mix and match can bear my sitting through.
Your vehicle of art is more an SUV,
A single movement now and then will do.

Say, the first of the Fifth!
The First of the 10th!

But all of the Seventh
Can be left on the benth.

Half of the first of the Second's OK
But the length of the Third tells me, "Throw this away!"

The First has a dirge to old Frere Jacque,
Yet I'd rather Herr Mahler were watching the clock.

And then there's the Sixth, the Spendiferous Sixth,
With two inner movements so easily mixth,
And two outer hairshirts crying to Alma,
Dramatic, so Uber, so Brian de Palma,
It's hard to consize them, two hammers or three,
So better ignore them, sit down to tea.

Now the last of the Fourth,
That's a pretty sweet song,
But I say to the Eighth, the Gargantuan Eighth,
The never-stop-singing-and-God-wringing Eighth,
Say I take all those thousands and thousands of notes,
Hide them like Florida's fraudent votes,
So they'll quickly so quickly be gone.

And I say to the Ninth, the Lingering Ninth,
Why must one suffer that music to wait?
Why must those movements crawl up to the plate?
Three gone in the Ninth, yet a fourth one's allowed?
No more will I join in the Lingerer crowd!

Look folks, it's time to revert to an age neo-Classic
Post-postmodern, brief, with music that's hurrier
Not lumbering, Saurian, semi-Jurassic,
No, more like the marvelous Microsymph (Currier).

Jeff Dunn
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