154 Music poems

Her wattled fingers can’t stroke the keys with much grace or assurance anymore, and the tempo is always rubato, halting, but still that sound—notes quivering and clear in their singularity, filing down the hallway— aches with pure intention, the melody somehow prettier as a remnant than whatever it used to be.

When the corpse revived at the funeral, The outraged mourners killed it; and the soul Of the revenant passed into the body Of the poet because it had more to say. He sat down at the piano no one could play Called Messiah, or The Regulator of the World, Which had stood for fifty years, to my knowledge, Beneath a painting of a red-haired woman In a loose gown with one bared breast, and played A posthumous work of the composer S—— About the impotence of God (I believe) Who has no power not to create everything. It was the Autumn of the year and wet, When the music started.  The musician was Skillful but the Messiah was out of tune And bent the time and the tone.  For a long hour The poet played The Regulator of the World As the spirit prompted, and entered upon The pathways of His power—while the mourners Stood with slow blood on their hands Astonished by the weird processional And the undertaker figured his bill. —We have in mind an unplayed instrument Which stands apart in a memorial air Where the room darkens toward its inmost wall And a lady hangs in her autumnal hair At evening of the November rains; and winds Sublime out of the North, and North by West, Are sowing from the death-sack of the seed The burden of her cloudy hip.  Behold, I send the demon I know to relieve your need, An imperfect player at the perfect instrument Who takes in hand The Regulator of the World To keep the splendor from destroying us. Lady!  The last virtuoso of the composer S—— Darkens your parlor with the music of the Law. When I was green and blossomed in the Spring I was mute wood.  Now I am dead I sing.

For Frances Dillon Hayward 1 Such splendid icecaps and hard rills, such weights And counter-weights, I think I scale the heights When pentatonic Chinese crewmen start Up in a cold sweat from the bottom of the keyboard Only to arrive at some snow-stormed valley To dissolve in steam-holes and vanish out of sight. 2 The left hand’s library is dull, the books All read, though sometimes, going under velvet, An old upholsterer will spit out tacks, Turn them into sparks and smartly hurl them Up and down the loudest bowling alley— His pressure of effects can last all night. 3 Two bird notes endlessly repeat themselves. Or are they fish scales—iridescent, hard? Mica into marble back to mica? No images in trills. They’re formal. Take Your foot off the pedal. You’re in a wood Near the sea. And every tree and wave is fake. 4 An underwater haircut by Debussy? Oh, that’s too easy. Astringent lotions Let the swimmer down by easy stages Down among the flashy soda fountains Down to the bottom where the light bulbs waver Down where all the mirrors eat their hearts out. 5 Grammar becoming poetry is what You’re after—say, a rational derangement Requiring that you forget technique And concentrate on what is harder like A fireplace that burns pine needles only, Before which spills the gore of Persian rugs. 6 A vial of antiseptic meant for Schubert, One modest, flat meticulous translation Of Chopin’s lightning undercurrent Spanish— These are the mere necessities of travel. Someone you must meet is Dr. Czerny. Then, through him, Domenico Scarlatti. 7 Seizure are occurring. Despite snow-lightning, The black keys are bent on mountain climbing— All of it against a doctor’s warning. Soon they’re descending like the black dots of A wirephoto in transmission. An Erotic black wing hovers up above. 8 Bach is more like opening an ember And digging hard into the heart of fire. The heart of fire is another fire. When it comes to Mozart, just say nothing. Think of it as milk, and drink it slowly. Slowly you will taste the cream of angels. 9 This black and white’s deceptive. Underneath The spectrum rages. Did you ever see The calmest waters quickly come to life Because a minnow’s tinfoil flash in sun Had rent them suddenly? It came. And went. We take two thousand takes before we print. 10 Don’t try to catch that lion by Rousseau. Before you wake, he’ll eat you up. If you Should meet the sleeping gypsy, let her sleep. Tomorrow they’ll be gone without a trace, Half fact and half enigma. Now your hands Are on the mysteries of the commonplace.

After Erik Satie For an hour I forgot my fat self, my neurotic innards, my addiction to alignment. For an hour I forgot my fear of rain. For an hour I was a salamander shimmying through the kelp in search of shore, and under his fingers the notes slid loose from my belly in a long jellyrope of eggs that took root in the mud. And what would hatch, I did not know— a lie. A waltz. An apostle of glass. For an hour I stood on two legs and ran. For an hour I panted and galloped. For an hour I was a maple tree, and under the summer of his fingers the notes seeded and winged away

One Christmastime Fats Waller in a fur coat Rolled beaming from a taxicab with two pretty girls Each at an arm as he led them in a thick downy snowfall Across Thirty-Fourth Street into the busy crowd Shopping at Macy’s: perfume, holly, snowflake displays. Chimes rang for change. In Toys, where my mother worked Over her school vacation, the crowd swelled and stood Filling the aisles, whispered at the fringes, listening To the sounds of the large, gorgeously dressed man, His smile bemused and exalted, lips boom-booming a bold Bass line as he improvised on an expensive, tinkly Piano the size of a lady’s jewel box or a wedding cake. She put into my heart this scene from the romance of Joy, Co-authored by her and the movies, like her others– My father making the winning basket at the buzzer And punching the enraged gambler who came onto the court– The brilliant black and white of the movies, texture Of wet snowy fur, the taxi’s windshield, piano keys, Reflections that slid over the thick brass baton That worked the elevator. Happiness needs a setting: Shepherds and shepherdesses in the grass, kids in a store, The back room of Carly’s parents’ shop, record-player And paper streamers twisted in two colors: what I felt Dancing close one afternoon with a thin blonde girl Was my amazing good luck, the pleased erection Stretching and stretching at the idea She likes me, She likes it

They’re all dressed up in carmine floor-length velvet gowns, their upswirled hair festooned with matching ribbons: their fresh hopes and our fond hopes for them infuse this sort-of-music as if happiness could actually be each-plays-her-part-and-all-will-take-care-of-itself. Their hearts unscarred under quartz lights beam through the darkness in which we sit to show us why we endured at home the squeaking and squawking and botched notes that now in concert are almost beautiful, almost rendering this heartrending music composed for an archduke who loved it so much he spent his fortune for the musicians who could bring it brilliantly to life.

where do his eyes go when he plays ballads? higher than smoke fogging the room, cymbals which rustle god’s earlobes like kisses. a friend swears there is a skylight in his hat where notes gather before plunging toward the bell of his tenor, while ben gazes longingly up the skirts of stars.

you are listening to the transmission via seed pearl, aural irritant clockwork and sparkgap ultra high and superlow precious black opal crystal and glass shudders and sings broad cast scattered the seeds among the apocrypha each agent at land or sea satellite or space direct conversion of royal register and groove high in fidelity to our regenerative radio hisses and shouts everything that cannot be owned belongs now to us irradiant waves oscillate below visible light to arrive and reside requires no medium but occupies vacuum and air transformational emission follow your radiotelegraph we are your conductor our amplitude varies we fluctuate the frequency we are not subject to static interference we embed the subcarrier hush y’all you need not know that language if you know this sound

What represses unhomes in the sound Who has made me what is made me Is a voice just muscles and shape and Breath to phrase a song boats assemble At the mouth of the harbor mouth in Earth you who wrote an ode to silence Never wrote of what is silenced I did Seek all resounding caves let the voice Be lit all the lanterns in the new world we Need the language of stone from string To string quiver in the opening the garden So beautiful Lucifer dark sun of morning No Eden but innocence no expulsion But after • No more will I listen to other than A single note moaned not known I do not here think again what place Presents itself own moan well eye Here body as a battery of the one Moment when it is time to open Your mouth to plug in I will allow what I invented to find its color make A shape which neither water nor Sky do how do you now in this Contained shape go through Your life not like a constellation Not guessed at intuited or divined No name so how do you discern a shape for What is often called g-d • Vantablack was made for missiles Or planes for defense purposes so dark No eye could see it some voices are Like that no one could hear them it Is not good to be lost to be lost is More than metaphor for spiritual Condition I sit at the terrace overlooking The green sea perhaps it is failure That ought to be sought the voice That fails falls silent Sheila’s or The body’s the blue failed me the sun Fails every evening I we you have all Failed too everyone who strove all these Long years for peace failed • August 7 Predawn blue and blue the sound Of the sea further away and less violent lights On the water fishing boats closer than I Imagined no one is awake some animals Maybe what I do without knowing in a Harrowing world what I do without knowing As I listen to the gurgle of water against The promontory I feel like I am listening To a body how slow and opening a piece Of tune where one does not know how It will unfold no chord or cadence to tell You in sound what the path will be how It will happen until it happens I do not want To be alone what does it mean anyway when Someone says “Muslim” • Can she still feel music in her body can she Vocalize even without technology of the Mouth tongue palate glottis vocal chords What is a voice Anish Kapoor granted Exclusive right to work with blackest Black she now communicates through notes And gesture Vantablack made for Military purposes like sound also used For torture all sounds to wake you vibrate Your brain what emerges as an echo from Music as torture children on the beach Playing god is sound or art or science Shit and sex the body’s echo what mess Is left in the big or the little death • Sheila’s voice always in the background Always disappearing into the music Of what surrounds it the way one loses Oneself in sex or death or the moment Of shitting I got lost in Salman’s Music he said it was a surrender of Ego when he left me behind but really It was a surrender of my will words too Have god inside but for the prize of The body they do not compete can Not hold the storm of time cannot Hold the line do I touch the ocean Inside will my family come to My funeral • That night we swam the full moon Civilized us federated us gave us Our nationality we who were lost I have now lost what little heritage I did have returned to the rude Rough world long vowels of Morning evening birds scream No soft blanket falling to cover But a throttling a suffocation Of dusk no silence when the self Stills the absence of noise is itself Torture I cannot sleep tongued loose Drones move through a riff by A singer without papers • August 9 Eleanna takes me out on The water Miller exploding the form Of the novel itself I see now how Nin Wanted to move away from his vociferous Singing of the world as material to try To construct a music of the way The mind works still fed by light on the Water a mute noise of engines under Water as the boat passes the light House and heads out for open sea Remembering in Palestine crawling Down the hill trying to catch a wifi Signal from the settlement untapped Improvisation of space • At the stone terrace the gardener lingers Clipping hedges while I work breeze Between us soon I will return I read The article about a poet who was killed In the street his poems untranslated All the artists and writers killed the open Space of the sea yesterday Eleanna and I Went too far out went almost all the way To Marseille we saw the pink-gray sky Of wildfire I accepted the waves I found In the chapters of the Quran to sing my Way through turbulence draw a way Through the waves savage wildfire all The villages evacuated • We woke to the smell of burning air A little cool smell of charred refuse Colors muted last night the moon Came clear nearly blue eyes too Painfully large rough on the eyes and Impatient but I wanted to look so Badly for the meteors the sea Crashing against the rocks smoke From the fire obscured the sky In the morning we rowed across The harbor and realized fear of heights And fear of depth is the same just one You see and one you don’t

A man reaches close and lifts a quarter from inside a girl’s ear, from her hands takes a dove she didn’t know was there. Which amazes more, you may wonder: the quarter’s serrated murmur against the thumb or the dove’s knuckled silence? That he found them, or that she never had, or that in Portugal, this same half-stopped moment, it’s almost dawn, and a woman in a wheelchair is singing a fado that puts every life in the room on one pan of a scale, itself on the other, and the copper bowls balance.