1247 Love poems

The last string quartet (Leoš Janáček and Kamila Stösslová) She reads romances, she spells poorly, she’s full-breasted, broad in the beam, matron in a cloche hat, bulky knee-length skirt, apron, thick calves, white stockings, Mary Janes. Her heels go click click on the pavement. She has those dark Gypsy eyes and the wide laugh. He loves it when she tosses her head like that. And here she is in long skirt and embroidered blouse, posing by her dwarf ornamental orange tree on the balcony: high pale forehead, stacked dark hair, heavy jaw, bust cleaving forward like a prow. And here she is on holiday with her husband the businessman the perpetual traveller with the commanding walk and striped tie and blunt mustache. “Two decidedly Jewish types,” writes Zdenka Janáčková, J’s wife: they send her, in the last year of the war, bread, butter, eggs, semolina flour, geese from the husband’s military contacts. * “My dear dark dove,” J calls Kamila, “My little one.” * He has taken dictation from every fountain in Hukvaldy, where he was born to endless mumbled rosaries of water. He notes the gush and prattle of the Fox’s Well as the beech tree flashes its sleight of leaf, and fox kits hide in the rocks; the public fountain, “a fine of ten crowns on those who fail to replace the cover”: and when the cover is replaced the fountain closes her eyes; the castle fountain, handsome, broad and brimming, but scuttled into pipes for manor farm, brewery and slaughterhouse where the stream blurts out in blood; and the little well hidden through tall grass at Kazničov, springing up through the roots of three lime trees, “Helisov’s Well,” chants the little girl, and he notes that too, the quavering fall of the name; and watches water bugs skitter and green moss, darkling, at the bottom, and shards of sky. * Bread, butter, eggs, semolina flour, geese. Kamila knows nothing of music, she worries about her dress for the première of Jenůfa in Vienna. She has two little boys, Rudi and Otto. Otto the baby swims on her hand and she leans over him, soft as night, one eyebrow tilted up as at a dream of which she is hardly aware. * “She was of medium height, dark, curly-haired like a Gypsy woman,” writes Zdenka, “with great, black bulging eyes. The voice was unpleasant, shrill.” * —That once again he saw “her raven hair, all loose,” and she was barefoot in the house and she climbed a ladder to pick apricots from the tree and she refused the gift of the knitted silver bag “And your eye has a strange depth, it’s so deep it doesn’t shine.” * Night leans hugely. He sleeps alone, in his study, upstairs at the Organ School. Zdenka sleeps in their villa across the yard. * He who had scrawled on his cuffs, on envelope scraps, on market paper, in his little pad, robins’ trills, girls’ chatter at the railway station, fox bark, thrush whistle, hen cackle, kitten mew, bee hum, “the chord of stalagmites covered with hoarfrost,” the airy, bell-like patter of fountain spray, scored in a notebook years before Kamila in a notebook 2 A.M. 24 February 1903 his daughter’s dying words— Olga— dying, age 21— in a notebook— “Now I remember that I’m supposed to die” (a little string of quarter notes, B and middle C)— “What walks we took on the corso”—“We should say so much—” He tells her, “You are the most beautiful among them,” and she smiles, in his notebook she smiles. And, down to a G, “Something gets lost so well, no one can find it.” In a notebook— 2:45 A.M. 25 February 1903, Olga, her light hair spread across the pillow, sighs “A-y-a,” two drawn out B’s, scrupulously noted by her father, and in the margin, “God be with you, my soul.” * What can be assimilated into song? * The rivers of Lachia: the River Lubina falls from a ridge of the Radhošť Mountain into an abyss, to seethe of silver, crash of dark; the Ondřejnice dabbles through the village of Mĕrkovice, past mossy banks, shallow, beery-blonde, tepid, where goslings swim dunking for weeds and bugs; and the River Ostravice is the color of steel, and smites the wrist with cold: and all the Lachian rivers run through cello depths, horn hurtle, foam-spray of glockenspiel, clash of cymbals at the smoky inn where Sofie Harabisová flies from arm to arm in the glare, smoke, sweat and stamp of feet: “Where is the poet Šťastný or Professor Batĕk or Mrs. Marie Jungova now? Gone, all gone, those who took part that wild summer night, forty-five years ago!” * Kamila reads romances. “There’s no love just innocent friendship. My husband’s away all the time he’s always got things to do.” * “Your raven hair— I write these lines so they’ll be read, and yet unread because unanswered. So it’s like a stone falling into water—” “You’re the star I look for in evening—” “I was your shadow—” “Even thoughts become flesh—” in the fountain bubbling up among the lime tree roots, mumbling its prayers over and over, tonguing the stones. * Now after the war, no need for bread, butter, eggs, semolina flour, geese delivered by special connection and Czechoslovakia is free in the Sinfonietta, in the razzle of brass: “I’m really an ordinary woman Your heart would stop aching if you saw me more.” There’s Rudi, there’s Otto, and her husband always dealing in his antiques. No we cannot attend the première in Prague no we cannot. Now after the war. For that cold: boil three onions with marjoram and lemon peel and drink it like tea with sugar. Your raven hair. I was your shadow, when you reached for the apricots. * Gut scrapings: the bow scrapes sunlight from that summer day at the spa at Luhačovice where she sat on the grass “like an exhausted little bird”: “Dear Madam, Accept these few roses as a token” where she sat on the grass, scrape sunlight from the inner petals, scrape the dark from her pupil, so deep it doesn’t shine. Madam: “Silence goes to sleep under every tree.” Under the tilt of her shadowed brow. His baby son died those years ago and Olga’s hair spreads wide across the pillow where she sighs. He sleeps alone it’s like a stone falling. * Lullaby, bee swarms, gut scraping, fracture, a waltz falters, the schmaltzy tune with raven hair whispers, breaks off, and the hand she lets him touch, for the first time, she does not draw away the first time, “your little hand,” in eleven years, under the linden boughs. “That dark Jewess,” writes Zdenka, “I rather liked her at first, but I held my position. You know how artists are. They have to be handled. I would not let him go.” * “These letters were written in fire.” Zdenka must understand: Kamila is the Gypsy girl, Káťa Kabanová, the Vixen, Aljeja, the little hidden well by the lime trees at Kazničov, the military fanfare on the promenade, trumpet, oboe, piccolo squeal when the Austrians march out, the Empire crashes, and the country is, like the high-wire flute notes, finally, free. Zdenka must acknowledge this: These letters were written in fire. * By now Kamila’s boys have been stuffed into trousers, stiff collars, and neckties. They’ve grown leggy, their faces are plump. It’s a question of tempi slightly retarded, a vertigo the viola suffers, following the violins. Silence goes to sleep under every tree. The cello drags gusts of confetti, repetition, emotion is all repetition pulled by twisted horsehair out of gut. My dear dark dove, a form of mourning, that too is a form of repetition. Why don’t you write. So when, those last days, she has come at last, with little Otto, respectably to visit the upstairs room he has built and furnished for her in his summer cottage in Hukvaldy, furnished according to his dream— “I want to have the painting of those two cherubs, a writing desk, a communal table, a comfortable bed, perhaps of brass, a wardrobe with mirrored doors, a marble wash-stand, and four chairs, each from a different part of the world—” (the question is, what can be assimilated into song) she peels oranges, makes tea, they shop in the market and play and walk and August 8, on the walk up the Babí hůra Hill, Otto gets lost in the woods and ravines— Something gets lost so well, no one can find it— and Leoš seeks and seeks the child in drenching rain as if searching for his own son in the woods and ravines under the wing of her darkly tilting brow and returns fevered. In a notebook no one writes, no one scores his cough. 10 August 1928 J consents to go to the hospital in Ostrava pneumonia—deterioration—sedative What walks we took on the corso Something gets lost so well So it’s like a stone Silence goes to sleep under every tree I was your shadow I burned your letters but I keep the ash No one scored the sleep rattle in Ostrava 12 August 10 A.M. Sunday Kamila at his side, a heavy woman who spells poorly, broad in the beam, with thick knees and white stockings, who reads romances, who will die of cancer seven years later at 43 and be buried in the Jewish cemetery in Písek. “And I kissed you And you are sitting beside me and I am happy and at peace In such a way do the days pass for the angels.” No one scored the sleep rattle Sunday 12 August. Only then, by his order, Zdenka is told and arrives by train. These letters were written in fire.

Tell us how the soul is bound and bent into these knots, and whether any ever frees itself from such imprisonment. —Canto XII, Inferno I say,Without a God there is no hell. There’s only this—. She rustles for her keys. The apple tree sheds petal after petal. She says,Let’s take you to the hospital. The petals spin like sparks. I close my eyes and say,Without a God there is no hell, and there is only this. It’s just as well. The lawn is red and white. She asks,Who says? How do you know? The wind fells every petal. She says,Let’s take you to the hospital. I cannot breathe. I cannot tell her,Yes—. Because without a God there is no hell, as she whispers,Talk to me, I know I will clamber—but not toward heaven, toward the sky, eyes winking behind petal after petal. The rope-burnt bark will flake away and fall. Knot on my neck, the rest would be so easy: I’ll pray,Without a God there is no hell, then slip through petals—through petal after petal.

Come in, come in. The water’s fine! You can’t get lost here. Even if you want to hide behind a clutch of spiny oysters — I’ll find you. If you ever leave me at night, by boat, you’ll see the arrangement of red-gold sun stars in a sea of milk. And though it’s tempting to visit them — stay. I’ve been trained to gaze up all my life, no matter the rumble on earth, but I learned it’s okay to glance down into the sea. So many lessons bubble up if you know where to look. Clouds of plankton churning in open whale mouths might send you east and chewy urchins will slide you west. Squid know how to be rich when you have ten empty arms. Can you believe there are humans who don’t value the feel of a good bite and embrace at least once a day? Underneath you, narwhals spin upside down while their singular tooth needles you like a compass pointed towards home. If you dive deep enough where imperial volutes and hatchetfish swim, you will find all the colors humans have not yet named, and wide caves of black coral and clamshell. A giant squid finally let itself be captured in a photograph, and the paper nautilus ripple-flashes scarlet and two kinds of violet when it silvers you near. Who knows what will happen next? And if you still want to look up, I hope you see the dark sky as oceanic — boundless, limitless — like all the shades of blue in a glacier. Listen how this planet spins with so much fin, wing, and fur.

Come when the nights are bright with stars Or come when the moon is mellow; Come when the sun his golden bars Drops on the hay-field yellow. Come in the twilight soft and gray, Come in the night or come in the day, Come, O love, whene’er you may, And you are welcome, welcome. You are sweet, O Love, dear Love, You are soft as the nesting dove. Come to my heart and bring it to rest As the bird flies home to its welcome nest. Come when my heart is full of grief Or when my heart is merry; Come with the falling of the leaf Or with the redd’ning cherry. Come when the year’s first blossom blows, Come when the summer gleams and glows, Come with the winter’s drifting snows, And you are welcome, welcome.

Is it possible That so high debate, So sharp, so sore, and of such rate, Should end so soon and was begun so late? Is it possible? Is it possible So cruel intent, So hasty heat and so soon spent, From love to hate, and thence for to relent? Is it possible? Is it possible That any may find Within one heart so diverse mind, To change or turn as weather and wind? Is it possible? Is it possible To spy it in an eye That turns as oft as chance on die, The truth whereof can any try? Is it possible? It is possible For to turn so oft, To bring that lowest which was most aloft, And to fall highest yet to light soft: It is possible. All is possible Whoso list believe. Trust therefore first, and after preve, As men wed ladies by licence and leave. All is possible.

We were apart; yet, day by day, I bade my heart more constant be. I bade it keep the world away, And grow a home for only thee; Nor fear'd but thy love likewise grew, Like mine, each day, more tried, more true. The fault was grave! I might have known, What far too soon, alas! I learn'd— The heart can bind itself alone, And faith may oft be unreturn'd. Self-sway'd our feelings ebb and swell— Thou lov'st no more;—Farewell! Farewell! Farewell!—and thou, thou lonely heart, Which never yet without remorse Even for a moment didst depart From thy remote and spher{e}d course To haunt the place where passions reign— Back to thy solitude again! Back! with the conscious thrill of shame Which Luna felt, that summer-night, Flash through her pure immortal frame, When she forsook the starry height To hang over Endymion's sleep Upon the pine-grown Latmian steep. Yet she, chaste queen, had never proved How vain a thing is mortal love, Wandering in Heaven, far removed. But thou hast long had place to prove This truth—to prove, and make thine own: "Thou hast been, shalt be, art, alone." Or, if not quite alone, yet they Which touch thee are unmating things— Ocean and clouds and night and day; Lorn autumns and triumphant springs; And life, and others' joy and pain, And love, if love, of happier men. Of happier men—for they, at least, Have dream'd two human hearts might blend In one, and were through faith released From isolation without end Prolong'd; nor knew, although not less Alone than thou, their loneliness.

for Peter Parrish Each morning the man rises from bed because the invisible cord leading from his neck to someplace in the dark, the cord that makes him always dissatisfied, has been wound tighter and tighter until he wakes. He greets his family, looking for himself in their eyes, but instead he sees shorter or taller men, men with different degrees of anger or love, the kind of men that people who hardly know him often mistake for him, leaving a movie or running to catch a bus. He has a job that he goes to. It could be at a bank or a library or turning a piece of flat land into a ditch. All day something that refuses to show itself hovers at the corner of his eye, like a name he is trying to remember, like expecting a touch on the shoulder, as if someone were about to embrace him, a woman in a blue dress whom he has never met, would never meet again. And it seems the purpose of each day’s labor is simply to bring this mystery to focus. He can almost describe it, as if it were a figure at the edge of a burning field with smoke swirling around it like white curtains shot full of wind and light. When he returns home, he studies the eyes of his family to see what person he should be that evening. He wants to say: All day I have been listening, all day I have felt I stood on the brink of something amazing. But he says nothing, and his family walks around him as if he were a stick leaning against a wall. Late in the evening the cord around his neck draws him to bed. He is consoled by the coolness of sheets, pressure of blankets. He turns to the wall, and as water drains from a sink so his daily mind slips from him. Then sleep rises before him like a woman in a blue dress, and darkness puts its arms around him, embracing him. Be true to me, it says, each night you belong to me more, until at last I lift you up and wrap you within me.

It was as if her love had become a big eye or some historical logic or a religious particle lodged in the brain. In the most costly services of a great society one may find the allure of a benign intelligence. I have hoped, since I was a child, to be surrounded by a group of articulate characters who might with gracious friendship provide some essential entertainment as Aaron’s which was a cane and then a snake and then a cane again great clouds of smoke from the forest Itsy bugs amarch my naked legs in my beard, to burn as one might with one’s eyes I learned, but can no longer remember with what dignity another’s care imbues one. You sit and pick the lice from my hair. What sort of life is this.

it would be that but only if I knew how again Could something like that get lost?    no only a little a little lost but if only I remember how I mean she or I oh a freight train goes by & they always do & did do I mean a real one too that I’m not on & am it very seriously in this serious love world that one where something oddly music will pass through your night and it will be me sweet me

O lord, he said, Japanese women, real women, they have not forgotten, bowing and smiling closing the wounds men have made; but American women will kill you like they tear a lampshade, American women care less than a dime, they’ve gotten derailed, they’re too nervous to make good: always scowling, belly-aching, disillusioned, overwrought; but oh lord, say, the Japanese women: there was this one, I came home and the door was locked and when I broke in she broke out the bread knife and chased me under the bed and her sister came and they kept me under that bed for two days, and when I came out, at last, she didn’t mention attorneys, just said, you will never wrong me again, and I didn’t; but she died on me, and dying, said, you can wrong me now, and I did, but you know, I felt worse then than when she was living; there was no voice, no knife, nothing but little Japanese prints on the wall, all those tiny people sitting by red rivers with flying green birds, and I took them down and put them face down in a drawer with my shirts, and it was the first time I realized that she was dead, even though I buried her; and some day I’ll take them all out again, all the tan-faced little people sitting happily by their bridges and huts and mountains— but not right now, not just yet.