WORK IN PROGRESS
ENTHEOMANIA
I've had entheomania many times in my life,
whether with the woman I'm married to or once
at the piano when playing something by Schumann,
and suddenly the key shifts and my hands follow
seamlessly and the whole back of my head
shivers with chill bumps as a friend who happened
to drop by unexpectedly that afternoon shouts
the first bravo I'd had since I was ten years old.
There was even a time when chanting a poem,
one of my own never read in public, afraid,
I suppose, that a burst of pleasure might crack
tranquility that seems to exist among books
of a little shop crowded with poetry lovers,
that suddenly I forget where I am, forget even
that it is my poem, written to be private,
and it spills through an air of heavy breathing.
Entheate moments for someone never moved
by priestly or rabbinical instruction, unless it is
that afternoon when a chord from an organ
vibrates and slowly dies over nine seconds
through dusty light; or an evening when an old pianist
is led to his keys and, with mania he has not lost
until he dies a month later, pulls us into chords
of Beethoven, leaving tears that are slow to cease.
These are words of a maniac, I tell myself,
even as I continue to pull them from the screen;
these are potential poems from a manic afternoon,
clusters of words caught in an entheate moment.
That word again, that word I had not known
until it fell from a ragged notebook pulled
from a drawer sure to contain other treasure,
something to share with this crazy world I love.
FOUNDERING
1
Buzzing on a bicycle down the hill to the lake,
I founder in a ditch that lines the path
and lie here for a time that seems endless
wondering if rattlers seen at dawn are what
I hear, a sharp rhythm at the core of my ear
not unlike symmetry that holds together
the sonata I am working on for a recital
coming up in just a week or two, if I survive.
A diamond back would be the worst, I think,
and struggle to my feet after feeling for glasses
that seem to be intact, unlike a knee
with broken threads of skin and smear of blood;
and if there is a snake, I don't see and peer
into still-twirling spokes of one of the wheels
and sigh at what I think my father will say
if I don't get the bike hidden in the shed.
It's not that I am worried about foundering;
I know my father will look first at the bike
and tell me I'll have to pay for those repairs
and sooner or later mother will fix the knee
(besides, it isn't the knee I use so much
except to play Liszt that is to follow Mozart);
she'll bind it up and maybe sniff as I wish
she'd get it over with so I can go and practice,
even if I flounder a bit in the last movement,
given the stiffness at my knee, at least this day;
though where, I wonder, will I get the cash
to fix the back wheel of a bike I never wanted.
2
Now, here I am, seventy years later, wondering
how the recital went and remembering how
on other occasions I crossed the path of a serpent
and slipped to a ditch for a moment or an hour
before I struggled free and took the bike back
to some dark corner where it may be forgotten
as I slipped on down another hill to a lake's edge
and watch for where the next serpent may appear,
suddenly here if I don't stay alert waiting
as we always must. I know, for I grew up
with snakes in palmetto thickets around the house
and lake and all over the cottage land on the gulf.
Several times Mother or I screamed as we pulled
a book from a shelf with a serpent, a bright-colored
deadly one or the rattler which at least warns one,
curled and full of threats that woke the afternoon.
They hid in the cool shelter of adventure books
or behind a blue edition of Keats I had bought
with my 12th-birthday money. I learned early
that if I paid attention I would be safe
and could continue without dying as two classmates
whose parents taught them only to look up
at eagles, never known to attack, much less kill
as rattlers and darts of bright colors will.
And yet... it's always 'and yet'... an eagle flies
at sunset above the water with a beautiful sweep
and takes our breath and circles high and carries
our dreams ever higher among clusters of clouds.
SEVENTY YEARS AT THE PIANO
Part One
1
Is there a moment between one chord and another
when silence fills with pain we try to ignore?
Did Mozart think of his dead son when he wrote
another sonata, lingering in B minor
until, suddenly, he found he had moved beyond
a fading echo of one last chord, one
I stumble over with fingers stiff with regrets?
Is there a way to hear the movement of sound
down the keyboard, slowly, softer, hesitant
to reach a resolution, without finding words
that rise out of the dark, out of a past
that stretches back through decades of trying to play,
trying to be more than I could ever be?
Can we ever just forget words that gather?
Is it just an old excuse, that fingers stiffen,
that melodies fall awkwardly through stillness
of afternoon? Was it just another excuse
when I was twelve and loved Grieg and knew,
when lights went out and I tried too hard to sleep,
that words were interrupting a flow of sound?
Did I really say, "I can't let go; I can't"?
2
For how much longer shall I return to keys
and fill a room with music and no words,
with chords that hold melodies high and higher,
to linger in upper reaches of the room,
to drive out silence full of aging weight
that follows me through early hours of the day?
Will I always fall back on the sound of words?
If no one cares, does it matter if no one hears;
if sound dies away that only I have heard,
if, like Beethoven, I can no longer hear
tones that break from these faltering hands,
if there is only a great silence in which
to sit and stare at fingers that have finished,
is there any reason I should break silence?
Could Beethoven feel the music he could not hear?
Were there vibrations down the length of his arms,
down his back and through buttocks to the heels?
Can poems exist without a sound, an image;
can music stir hollow shadows of night,
empty spaces of the room? Can it fill
what lies beyond as we slip beyond ourselves?
3
Has it really taken seventy years to find
rhythms for Liszt or Mozart, to find rhythms
for a handful of words, and then more, for images
of where I'd be if it wasn't here I lingered?
Is this the beating of my heart, a flesh
I've worn, sounds I can no longer remember?
Is music here because it has been played?
When gone, when we are all gone, will pots
we made, the lines we wrote, the music linger
somewhere about the house or in gardens
where daffodils are pushing toward the sun?
But isn't there a difference, when the lines
fade from a page, when notes of Beethoven fade
as from the book I was given decades ago?
Is there an echo of music I played this morning?
Will it make a difference if I play sonatas
day after day? Is that like reading this poem
aloud as lights fade and suddenly I know
words are sliding into some other world?
But will I care? Is there any reason to care
what happens tomorrow to the world we made?
4
I finish those lines, at least one version, one
that is different from the one the day before,
and go down to the piano for a little Brahms….
Well, not exactly. I was ready to go and thought
I'd play some Brahms and then find the words;
but now I'm finding words of another stanza,
another movement I didn't know was here.
I hear some variations on a theme of Handel
listened to yesterday. I can play them,
I think, can bring those notes alive myself,
today, after playing with words I've written
on these imaginary pages, this screen
that gives a little light to the dark room;
I'll carry words and light the lights and play.
And here, again, I pause to go in search
of those variations; but words continue with songs
I hear when the house is quiet and darkly haunted
and I wonder if five-beat lines are what I heard
when I began these lines a week ago,
wondering why I'd not done more with music,
except with words, these never casual words.
5
It's almost over now, three stanzas left.
An evening stretches to find my fingers full
of variations beyond my touch; and rain
has drawn a beaded shawl across the window.
Though some friends have died with a minor stir,
and many of us have found the day restrained,
leaving night with dreams we'd just as soon forget,
some friends still pull images from the dark
and shove aside the muck to start again,
with rhythms of a dance we may soon forget,
a melody that almost catches fire,
an image that lingers for those of us who care.
Music's in the memory of what we love
in scratching poems with a broken, yellow pencil.
The wind whistles at the corner of the house
and lights are flickering; Andrea's flute
rises up the stairs, one note at a time,
with Bach's attempt to weave a cluster of notes
into an affirmation. That's what I'll do:
I'll end the poem with another trial of keys,
just after I finish these last five beats….
Part Two
1
She rose from the piano and talcum powder
left dust in the hot afternoon as I tried
to imitate the sounds she'd made, the chords,
the lifted fingers, carefully, one by one
in melodies I hear today when I play
that prelude, slowly building to a crash
in a chord this childish hand could not then reach.
The other kids are gone; I stay to play
just for her as she floats through rooms
with whispers: "Yes, just there," she says and sighs
the melody; "let the finger hold that note."
So long ago and yet I hear that note —
E flat, it has to be E flat, vibrato —
that echoes as the note that anchors me.
A sound, a note to last that long? She'd laugh
if she could know. I visited her when she
retired and moved away, when I thought that I
was grown and comfortable in the larger world.
She didn't want to hear what I would play,
but took me for a walk in the neighborhood
and pointed to the dying elms and sighed.
2
The only time the pretty blonde would pay
attention was when I banged away at Liszt;
but when I finished and turned to smile at her,
she'd wandered off with a one-armed football player
as big as the grand piano on the stage.
The lights would dim and, wandering back to keys,
I'd push around a sad piece and grind my teeth.
On Thursday mornings, when school would gather
for stuttering instructions from the principal,
the band would play with much enthusiasm
and I'd be asked to play mazurkas or chant
a poem about the burning of a town
in Poland, where a little boy had played
so well the farmers came and danced at night.
I thought applause would cure the pain I felt;
I thought they really cared. It's long ago.
The clapping disappeared before I left,
before journeys led me into other worlds
where music sang like angels for themselves,
and I would pass a bit of time at the keys,
not minding where they stumble and fall.
3
I quit because I found my hands, these fingers,
lagged behind the violins and horns;
for twenty years I rarely touched a key.
I'd listen and rejoice at what I heard
from a dying breed or the young who came along
and showed us something new, a reach of chords
beyond the tones we'd held in memory.
One can't return, and moving on is hard,
but these pale hands needed something of their own;
so I bought a cheap piano, was hesitant,
exhilarated and afraid, and found
a slow return to Mozart, Bach, and all
the others who, in awkwardness, I played,
though daughters left the room and old friends laughed.
It takes a while to know it can't be done
for others, not music, not the stuff that matters:
it's only for oneself that fingers reach,
if even with an awkward hesitation,
for the rising affirmation in a piece
that has no narrative to carry us;
it's only there to listen to and hear.
4
I tried again, it's true: I took a year of lessons
from a woman in the neighborhood who played
with great finesse, without a hunger for fame;
I bought a good piano and everyday
did scales and tried to lift the fingers high,
in such a way that notes came loud and clear
and held themselves above a rumbling base.
And then one day I knew: it's just for me,
for no one else, for no applause, no lights,
like reading a book of poems alone at night,
when passion passes through the aging body
and one forgets the anguish of the day;
it's sitting in the darkness of a room
and touching keys with gentleness and love.
But it isolates…. I find myself alone
and wonder if that's what real musicians find
or if it's only I, still searching for something,
still tying these words together, sounds of Bach,
this line that opens before the next word comes,
while silence in the house is overwhelming
and gardens in the sun are beckoning.
5
Sometimes I want to laugh, in fact I do,
at how the words and sounds still muddle through;
I want to slam the pages shut and go
and share a hug with my companion: She knows
the joy of bringing images alive,
the pain of struggling with the depth of sound,
the interruptions that will throw one off.
That helps, but doesn't make the Mozart dance;
it's just a moment to make a difference.
I should stop now and find out where she lingers,
but there are only eleven lines to go
and then I want to find that Debussy
I heard this morning and see if I can make
the slow part work enough to feed my dreams.
I've written and played for seventy years, and still
it falters at what my fingers would have it be.
Perhaps that's it, that's why I can't retire,
I haven't finished yet. There's too much to do,
Another poem after this, sonatas
not yet tampered with; and yes, that Bach
I've always been afraid to try, until now.
THREE PARTS OF THE WHOLE
The body, in eroticism or pain from a wound, is physical;
the mind, adding two plus two or drafting a plan for war,
is intellectual, even if quite stupid;
and between the two there is a lingering of laughter or tears,
the emotional, the third bit of what we are.
A body can lose touch with the mind and find itself
caught in a maelstrom of unidentifiable emotions while it cries
'what is it?' when it can't even form a question;
it's what happens to those caught in a field of fire
as they learn to stumble on crutches.
The syntax of these poems is an intellectual achievement
while the rhythm and battlement of sound are, I hope,
an issue from the ear or beating heart;
while somewhere down the page there may be a hint
of what happens in fearful moments.
If ideas balance emotions, there will be a poem, a song;
if a structure full of reverberations of music or the past
echoes with the precision of Bach
and it all balances as it comes together in equanimity,
then there's a fourth thing to call the spirit.
SONNET FOR PALAZZO BARBARO
It is there that steps go up,
and afterwards come down, turning
stones worn almost to a trough
have worn a way for hundreds of years
and we are there for an afternoon
and a stroll through the library
though now, the owner sighs, the Tiepolo ceiling
like so much else in the fall of what lies beyond
in an exhaustive turning through the afternoon
of upper rooms where copies of paintings
make the family look discouragingly proper
as if exhausted by a century of climbing
little by little carving an apartment
each time having to climb higher among rafters,