“It was then,” she wrote later in her memoirs,
“That I realised I was Karsavina.”
It’s getting late. The garden has gone quiet.
The conference of the finches is dismissed.
Time to go in and rest from too much watching
How time, like fame, flies on such fleeting wings.
No birds were hurt in the making of this poem.
The Rest is Silence
or
Stroking Her Feet to Opus 131
I
Rehearsing this quartet, Beethoven heard
Nothing at all. He checked the players by
Watching their bows. He barked the odd harsh word
But couldn’t hear that either, and yet I
Am blissed out once again by what he found
When searching in his world without a sound
There, near the end. The Ninth was done. To die
Was really all the man had left to do,
And yet he did this. In our time apart,
Grand opera was what most appealed to you,
But now I hope that you may take to heart
This music without voices, which in fact
Is singing in its essence, the contact
Of Earth with Heaven in a surf of art
Whose forms diversify and fractionate
Past all our expectations except one:
What happens next will be well worth the wait
And prove a burst of beauty was begun
Far back, the way the upsurge of the sun
Is written in the stars.
II
I love this bit, this bit I love. Bit this,
Bit that. Fragments advance. Collect. Go back.
These pizzicato figures you can fit
Short words of Shakespeare to. Alas, alack,
To smooth. That rough. Touch with. A tender kiss.
Enough of that. This is the end of it.
Too smooth. Examine that word “soothe”:
It’s so, oh, the. The flexing female foot,
Touched underneath by a male fingernail,
Signals approval of a cruel finesse.
Suave harshness. Harshly suave. Again. Stop go.
Of that which is desired, too much.
Of that which is desired too much, no end.
But soft, she stirs. Be not at fault. Go slow.
A cliff of dissonance grinds to a halt
And turns to snowflakes on a windless night
That fall past the streetlight.
III
The end was coming in his quiet kingdom.
A tyrant with his conversation books
Which really meant that he did all the talking,
He set old friends against each other. He
Was never a nice man as Haydn was.
I know you think I cite the bastardry
Of artists to excuse myself because
My conscience would ache otherwise. It’s true,
But let me say – I’ll whisper it – this much:
It might have taken inner turmoil to
Bring him at last to this sublimity,
A fist of rage unfolding to a touch
As light as fingertips on curling toes,
And if he did not smile, watching the bows,
It meant a blessing when he did not frown.
Still air, still air, and still the flakes come down.
IV
The women he loved best were out of reach –
The Countess Kegelwicz, Countess Guicciardi,
Countess Erdödy, Countess This or That –
Because of his low birth. Pity him, then:
His “van” did not mean “von”. He was not noble,
Except for ranking above any man
Alive, and she, the one he called Immortal,
The Immortal Beloved,
Knew that, and gave him what she had to give:
They kissed each other, at the very least.
“My angel, my everything, my very self”
He wrote, and wrote it always in his music.
His Josephine was like Napoleon’s: there always
Even under other names. Jeanette,
Eleanore, Magdelena and Babette:
They all were her, and when he reached for her
They all were in his arms. Born for each other.
Sie waren für einander geboren
Wrote her sister Therese. Unless Therese
Was the Immortal Beloved. Speculation
Continues. But for sure, though short and ugly,
The famously great flirt was not all talk:
He knew exactly what a woman felt like,
Although, perhaps, it only almost happened.
The Distant Beloved was someone else again,
And no one has an inkling who Elise was –
We just know he wrote her a bagatelle
Which, played on YouTube by Pogorelich,
Must stir the depths of his immobile hairstyle –
But it’s fair to guess Beethoven felt the heat
A woman gives off even from her insteps,
Before he reached the cool room of these structures
Separately drifting in transparent air,
Connected only by the space between them.
V
For just a few bars you can hear the fury
With which he crossed the Emperor’s name
Off the Eroica. If you first have that,
Then later Florestan and Leonore
Can come back to each other’s arms.
It’s said of him he wrote only one opera
And yet he wrote the only opera,
But here, too, we are listening to voices:
It’s just that they’ve been turned to wood and catgut
Like metamorphoses from Ovid.
Out of the tumult drifts serenity
All the more calm from being so hard-won:
Sweetness from bitterness, a prisoner
Released into the sunlight.
VI
As from the white break of the vault there slides
The surf rider
Trailing his seaside fingertips
Like a stylus through the wave’s green face,
Out of the conflict a new concord comes
With an extra grace,
A bride’s glide,
Like the peaceful grief on the Madonna’s lips
Of the St Peter’s Pietà.
It’s sixty years since I first heard the Seventh
And knew I would write poetry for life,
And we, for all that time, have known each other,
And for most of it been man and wife,
And, now it has been proved not even I
Could quite destroy all that,
We are still here, together for as long
As life permits. Next stop, eternity:
Which could be what he’s trying to say now.
VII
Did he know his death was close? No one can tell.
He might have thought it had already come
When deafness did. This loveliness might sound
Like a summation, but we should beware
Of teleology. He left a sketch
For a Tenth symphony. Art masters have
Rarely packed up to leave the studio:
They live in it, and always would do more.
Though they might turn their faces to the wall,
They sing in silence. After this last note
Silence returns, but is not the same void
We heard before the start. In silence squared
We rise up from the couch and live again,
As if on the first day we ever touched.
Edith Piaf on YouTube
Nobody sings a song of love like her.
I’ve picked three tracks you haven’t heard before
To take us back again to where we were
When we first met.
Tu e
s partout. Je sais comment. La valse de l’amour.
If we had heard these then, would we have been
So bold as to believe love might stay true?
She says that love has nothing it can mean
Beyond its loss.
La valse de l’amour. Je suis content. Tu es partout.
The long run happened and we placed the bet.
We rolled the dice and saw them pitch and toss,
And still it seems we’re no more finished yet
Than these songs are:
La vie en rose. Ah! Ça ira! Ne me quitte pas.
A Heritage of Trumpets
The clear, clean line was always the ideal.
Though there was subtlety in how Miles muttered,
One always ached to hear a song-line uttered
With definition, lyrical and real:
A well-timed silence puncturing the swing
Only to add propulsion. Play that thing!
Bunk Johnson used to do that, way back when,
Inheriting the clean articulation
Of Buddy Bolden. The controlled sensation
Of vaulting gold that drove a funeral then,
Linked death to dancing people, grief to joy:
The rich, sweet notes rang like the real McCoy.
The open horn was king. There was no mute,
Not even Cootie’s, that could set the measure
Of confidently opened casks of treasure
Lighting the cave, and turning the blue suit
Of tactful mourning to a pirate kit:
The lawlessness, the skipping lilt of it.
Pure gold in Paris after WWII,
Bill Coleman’s open horn proved mainstream muscle
Could still outstrip the nervous, shuffling hustle
Of New York be-bop. Louis Armstrong blew
Coherent lines until the very end.
The same requirement applies, my friend,
To you, and all the more so as the day
Arrives when silence reigns, and Bix in glory
With just one passing phrase sums up your story:
The dying voice of silence. Blaze away
Into the dark, bugler. Be sure the night
Reflects your song with every point of light.
Panis Angelicus
Tipped off by you, I watched the YouTube clip
Of Pavarotti and his father singing
That transcendental César Franck duet
In the gallery of Modena Cathedral.
Slowly the lens pans up, and there they are.
Now they are in my dreams, perhaps because
The guiding father is a theme for me
That aches a long way down. More likely, though,
This haunting happens for the simple reason
They sound so very beautiful together
We might be listening to a strand of life
Slowly assembling and made audible
In all its linkages and balancings,
As if the way an angel sings had been
Caught in a mirror and returned through time.
A lifetime has gone by since we first listened
To music and, wrapped in it, found each other.
Forgive me for not seeing straight away
It was the blessing by which we two pagans
Late in our lives might eat the bread of angels.
Sweet Disaster
(Ronsard Sings of Hélène)
For you, it’s easy to lay down the law
At your age, just a fraction of my age.
All you need do is turn another page
And suddenly you see my name no more.
Where have I gone? It’s almost a surprise,
But all too soon you will believe your eyes
And think I vanished, as you told me to,
From all the world. The world, though, is still here
For me, and achingly devoid of you –
Worse, there are fantasies that come too near
Resembling you. They bend and speak to me
In your voice, whispering, “What do you see?”
I see you sighing in the grip of bliss:
That much you heard me say, and now you say
Well, that will do. No more for you today,
Or ever. Not a touch and not a kiss.
I have my life to start. This has to end
With one clean break that no soft soap can mend.
Bravely I take it in and hope you lie,
But know you don’t, for you are not the type:
Too true by nature. When you caught my eye
I knew already that our time was ripe
To run its course in just a year or less
And end. And now I live with my distress
And it is worse, far worse, than I supposed
It might be when I first became aware
That I would suffer if you were not there.
I still can’t bear to see the chapter closed,
And it is months now and will soon be years
That you are not here to behold my tears.
What was achieved? For you, I hope and trust,
Some guarantee there is a gentle touch
A man can have which proves him not unjust
In this dispute where women risk so much:
And as for me, although I lost, I won
Your love awhile, a great thing to have done.
Throughout this poem I have changed the frame
To bring two rhymes together, then apart,
Thus echoing, with one cry from my heart,
Our dance of love. Let this, then, be your fame
When you are gone, if it be my fame too,
To find true glory through my loss of you.
Declaration of Intent
My poems are the balladry of cavaliers
Composed in the lost cause that was the King’s,
It is because the way of things
Has gone against the haughty confidence
That once allied sweet music to sound sense,
So now their rhymes and rhythms count as frills and rings.
My poems are the closing words of heretics
Burnt to a cinder and their dust dispersed.
A fierce belief that melts to stain the courtyard bricks
Proves its sincerity at first,
But fades in sunlight as the winning side
Writes history and denies even the pride
Of those who lost, the cruelty that hurts them worst.
My poems written now that I must take my leave
Give thanks good fortune saw me kindly borne
To this departure point, and therefore when they grieve
It is for anyone they mourn
But me. I still recall, when I’m alone,
Children of my age marked with stars and thrown
Into the night and fog, the falling ash of dawn.
My poems sing of life. Though death is also there
In how they crystallise an emphasis
Like a tango maestro pausing, they do not despair:
They just acknowledge the abyss
Awaiting us. It brings finality
To what we were. It will do that for me
Soon now. My poems prove that I accepted this.
My poems take defeat for granted, but they say,
Gallant or gaunt, if we can choose to die
We have been blessed to live. It never came my way,
That random flail of chance, and why
My life must end is known to me. In view
Of these facts, I take care that what I do
Pays back the luck with which I lived to see time fly.
Initial Outlay
I take off my disguise and thus reveal
The man I used to be but now am not.
Surely when I made mirth I was less real
Than I am now. Before this thing I
’ve got
Made laughter hard, I used to spread around
My sunny nature with a liberal hand:
Not overdoing it, you understand,
But eager to amuse, if not astound.
My death came very near, and out of that
I also tried to make a joke, but then
Death didn’t happen and the joke fell flat,
And bit by bit I came alive again.
I still faced doom, but when that day would be
Was back in question. Thus I shared the case
Of anyone at all, since all must face
That imprecisely distant certainty.
Winter again, but low on snow and ice.
My lungs are less taxed than they might have been.
The distant thunder of the rolling dice
Grows silent, as if death had quit the scene.
At this rate I will still be here in spring,
And that will make, since I fell ill, six years
I wasn’t meant to have. I could shed tears
For what I’ve lost, but I’ve gained everything:
My family built this house for me just so
That I may read and write. No doubt my last
Lines will be written here. For all I know,
That means tomorrow, but for now the past,
So vivid in my mind, suggests I might
Consider both men real, the cock-a-hoop
Rapscallion and this old crock with the stoop
Who sits and scrawls away the live-long night,
Making a neat design of penitence,
Transmuting shame into a melody,
As if the senseless paved the way for sense
Or craft made up for infidelity,
And all that heartbreak were the price for this
That I at last can do now, having learned
The truth about the cost for all concerned
Of my apprenticeship in artifice.
Night-Walker’s Song
How strange, that now my strength is sunk so low,
My powers of handicraft have reached their height,
Starting new poems even in the night
So I must, cursing, rise, and slowly go
Downstairs to settle at my desk and write
Until my kitchen fills with the dawn light,
And pages fill, too, with fresh stanza frames
I fancy rich and sweet as honeycomb,
Black holes on paper where starlight, instead
Of hiding, comes back sparkling from the dead.
Why don’t I think that these are just word-games
A broken man plays in the nursing home?