Gesualdo's Evening Shadows

There's the story and then

There's the composition,

And it's hard to tell whether

The latter depends on the former,
And when. Vicious difficulty
Attends upon such a question,
But only for those drawn to dusk
And their own miniature gothic
Tableaux of the romantic terrible.

There are those for whom murder
Precludes rather than tempts
Associations with dark genius.
Genius must be Apollonian,
Enlightening, ennobling or no
Kind of genius at all. Gesualdo
Was, of course, a noble, which was
Part of the problem with him,
But never mind. Others prefer

Music other than bizarre choral
Complexities and don't give a damn
Whether the author of that awful
Sound was deranged or good
And kind. His own kind, the few
Devils in hell with innate preference
For both the dark and the dense,
Down in the center of nether things,
We like both bent, sound and sense.