His Last Concert

I wasn't there to hear the choir though once I sang with them, but I still think of Holliday at closing--cadence coming up and his conducting stern, impassive just as always with the same authority, demanding and receiving absolute attention, pulling them along . What were his thoughts, I wonder, amid those final glorious moments of polyphony? And then again the homophonic chords resolving with "amen," his gaze still far away, aside, when just before the cutoff he would turn, perhaps, to look directly at the singers --that faintest hint of smile appearing, wrists in last release, the frame of stillness introduced... hands in the air... four seconds of suspended time and he stepped down to face the last applause, what then? Without success, I understand, they asked him back as guest in those successive years but knew as well as he, in cadence there is no reprise.