Classic Poem

It was a day of festival, the mandarins assembled,
The feast was spread, the banners flew, unfastened stood the door,
Then came the blind musicians, fingering down the passage,
To settle in a cluster on the cold stone floor.

Well do I remember the laughter of the mandarins
Playing with their bowls of honey-colored wine,
And the twitter of the girls as they danced with unchanged faces
Or sang like cicadas standing in a line.

But more than any mandarin or any girl dancing,
I remember looming in the darkness of the hall
The shadowy forms of blind men sitting in the passage
Making fateful music with their heads against the wall.