This cry-sound-angst has a long history.
To sound the cry now is as the first time
Any creature felt it and body-shook
With death’s cry-hurt welled from deep inside,
Bursting to get outside and be yelled-out!

Its start, poet-cried by Tennyson as
“Nature, red, in tooth and claw” — for us all;
With the so many ways death makes its call.
Ancient tales of Orpheus song-rites quelled
Tears with death’s escape to live again.

Then…

Virgil’s Orpheus- told such exits fail;
He looked-back to see Eurydice gone.
No songs or tales could keep the myth.
What fault to turn when death cries no return?
Virgil’s memory clue: lookback to bring back.

Lover’s cries left but one swan to sing.
Soon, Orpheus’ alone-song was torn
By power-ragings ‘gainst silence and loss.
Soon, cries for myths of death that does not die
Heard Jesus cry ancient Orpheus back;

Dead Eurydice saved by mortal song!
O Death’s Lamenting Lyres!!Soon, seven-word
Sayings-cries, from Jesus nailed to a cross,
Resounded loud of  life’s immortality.
His cry-look so far away from Earth’s home.

And…

This victory o’er death, tamed memory’s song.
This salvation made an institution,
Brought forth strong priests of the Inquisition,
Who, looking back, silenced bold, new singers’
Cries shouting new songs of a changing world.

Dark powers . . . in place from the dark past
Of a world unlike the world now known. . .
Burned Bruno at the stake, his tongue spiked shut,
So he could make no sayings — only cries
Of agony enflamed to dead silence.

So it was until life’s Voltaires cried-out
Against such kills as willed by some good God’s
Judgement to tongue-spike other’s wills thus dead.
He cried out loud — ‘Ecrasez l’infame’ —
Rallied reason’s heart ‘gainst deaths willed by God.

Thus,

Enlightenment’s out-cry for freethought’s time
And new Orpheans with new lyres. . .new songs
New prophets they — no more silenced — singing
Rilkean lays “of unquenchable cries”–
Life’s Odyssean mortal-quest for home. . .

Midst cries out loud – that loves and all must die.
This Orphean-Odyssean sang in
“Glistenings’ ”– “Requiem Elysium” —
Memory’s bring-her-back for tomorrow’s
Truth-Beauty-Justice. . . Love’s. . . presence alive. . .

Ever So In Mortal Song —

THAT CRIES OUT LOUD — OUT! –AGAIN&AGAIN!

mdok – 1/25/19

[Because this is an APE — APOETESSAY — I can make reference to myown work in that last Quintrain. (That A stands for Autobiography and ‘Apok’strophes’.) So, I broke some rule doing so. But, nowhere could I find another author’s writing that summed the CRY ( ancient to now ) and the deeper symbolism in Orpheus’ (breaking Hade’s rule) — and looking back to grasp Eurydice, howsoever, at that moment of angst. And, this, in the context of Virgil’s knowing the dead can’t be brought back — except by looking back and bringing home in Memory. Rilke said Sonnets to Orpheus came to him as if given and unchanged. I make, much, the same claim for “Requiem Elysium.”]