Music of John Barry

Hear John Barry's musical scores play in some movies:  James Bond classics, Somewhere In Time, Dances With Wolves, and Out of Africa.  The musical scores I like from Barry's compositions are from Out of Africa and Indecent Proposal.  I recently re-watched the movie, getting a feel for his again.  The painting associated with his music is Albert Bierdstat's The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak, (1863).  Bierdstat's painting shows great American westward expansion, in which the main subject of the painting lies in the very Rocky Mountains.  Bierdstat's painting had been sold to railroad companies and financiers because of the subject matter — the great American west.  The painting is part of manifest destiny, shining light peers through a crack of clouds which hang in the heavens.  My poem is inspired by Bierdstat's painting, John Barry's musical score, and Sydney Pollack's movie Out of Africa.  I had read Walt Whitman's collection of poems and it includes a lot of catalogues (list of things, names, places), and I have allowed his writing style to influence mine.  The movie Out of Africa had scenes where children sings, chants to Africa's scenic landscapes.  I've also included this in the poem.

Choir of children sing hymns throughout the motherland,

At the heartland lades ivories, gold, diamonds, nature’s riches,

Motherland on earth, hidden to outsiders on the home yard,

By the nature of its land, the angels chant in the winds, plains to beaches,

 

 

Daylight peers out of the highlands in the mountains,

Early morning sunrise wraps me warm,

Daylight and its aglow on the wide-spread acres stretch and roar,

By the nature of its land, children’s voices fill tunes and hums,

 

 

Harvested riches of the earth soar,

Riches of sugar sprout under the scorching sun,

Cocoa, crops at the crest of the wave swarm,

By the nature of its land, children laugh, race at the fountains,

 

 

Bison, oxen, water buffalos, giraffes graze the main,

Deers, cattles, lions — dart, dash, hop in rushes,

The rough heaths of Mother Nature’s riches at the heartland,

By the nature of its land, children whispers ring in pitches.