varying degrees of heaven

When you hear really amazing choral presentations on the radio do you tend to think the soprano voices are women, like I do?  Perhaps some are but tonight we witnessed that the choir was entirely without women at Christ Church as the voices soared to angelic heights that might make the unholiest of us accept anything to be allowed to stay for more notes.  They are little boys.  Boys perhaps of five or six years to just over Naya's age who sing gloriously and boldly so that I kept having to bend my neck around searching for the women I thought must be hiding from my view.  Now I understand the tragedy of puberty from a new angle & the reason such a thing as castrato/i might seem rational.  And the tragedy of all the priest business as well, yet more fully.

Then as we left Christ Church, sweeping our long coats over ancient paths, the bell at Tom Gate (the main gate) struck seven times, with Naya saying she couldn't believe little boys could do that, and the stars overhead were grand and clear; and, I wished that the little boys could follow us all the way home and sing us to sleep.  But instead we have our nightly flutist, who Naya has named "The Flutist on the Roof."  Maybe he is a castrato whose voicebox has failed anyhow despite heroic efforts?

From a fellow of Christ Church who must've seen what I just saw:

The More Loving One

by W. H. Auden

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.