Sonata Mulattica

Are all people who come to Vienna bewitched so that they have to stay here? It rather looks like it.

I believe that so long as the Austrian has his brown beer and sausage he will not revolt.

Because there comes a time.

Because there was a time.

Because I want to be known as a gentleman

everywhere.

Because Haydn came from there; came, and went back.

Because I am no longer a Wunderkind.

Because you saved me.

When I was a child, I was content

to fit the notes to the joy I felt.

Chords unfurled shimmering ribbons

I twirled myself in, as if into a chrysalis.

Then I wanted love, whole sheets of it

to wrap myself warm for sleeping.

Less spontaneous, I performed vigorously;

the world was not as large as the sound

I sent to it. More admiration, fetes.

Women began sampling, nibbles & slurps;

I played to keep the noise going,

to fill me up. But now I want only

to find love that resists, notes that will not fit;

I want to be appalled & staggered

in equal measures, I want blood

& blood’s aftermath—

weariness & affliction, sans mercy.

I had forgotten her pinks and creams,

the sprigged apron tied on like a heavenly shield,

the small smile transfigured by the task

set before her: Feed your sons.

I had forgotten her nasal contralto, its feathery edges,

and the smell of old honey and almonds

whenever she moved through the kitchen—

as she does now, suddenly, to hug

then hold me at arm’s length, like a wooden nutcracker,

her pale eyes searching mine, ardent for anything

I could spare, a little piece of me, a soul-scrap

tossed like bad meat to the yapping dogs in the street

Summer ended powerfully—as if God

had snapped a branch from his mightiest oak

and thundered: “Enough.” The sky dimmed.

Cloaks appeared. The Elbe’s blue road

turned wild and gray, struck by a grim fury.

Everywhere one trudged, stone claimed

dominion and set an implacable face

to the centuries—only to culminate

in this pleasing line of turrets and domes

along the rapidly darkening riverfront.

Wind fingered the crevices; timbered walls

stiffened as chill seeped up through our boots.

Cathedrals thrilled to their tasks: spires

bristling at twilight and the doors cranked wide

to spew out their gold.

High in the organ loft

we waited, my brother and I, skins burnished

by candlelight, instruments gleaming. Watched

them enter—the weary, the obedient, the curious;

a ghostly scent of malted barley rising

from their thick woolens and flaxen hair.

They came for comfort, dragging

the cold in behind them; they came for light

then closed their eyes, the better to listen:

cello ploughing low while I skimmed

the thin ice above, teased the bright edges.

All winter we played, and they lingered—

through incense and gingerbread, from Advent

to Christkindl to New Year’s to Drei Könige

(a salute to Balthazar, the Dark King!)—

and when the listening was finished,

they stood up to gather their bundles,

the last candle guttered, and we stepped out

to a world rinsed of cares: A pale lemon light

shone over the river; on the far shore

I could see a faint radiance, a white path—

snowbells budding, shouldering up

through the muck for their first raw gulp

of pure ether—and I knew

it was time to take destiny

further south.

Ach, Wien

The truly great cities are never self-conscious:

They have their own music; they go about business.

London surges, Rome bubbles, Paris promenades;

Dresden stands rigid, gazes skyward, afraid.

Vienna canters in a slowly tightening spiral.

Golden façades line the avenues, ring after ring

tracing a curve as tender and maddening

as a smile on the face of a beautiful rival.

You can’t escape it; everywhere’s a circle.

Feel your knees bend and straighten

as you focus each step. Hum along with it;

succumb to the sway, enter the trance.

Ah, sweet scandal: No one admits it,

but we all know this dance.

Three miles from my adopted city

lies a village where I came to peace.

The world there was a calm place,

even the great Danube no more

than a pale ribbon tossed onto the landscape

by a girl’s careless hand. Into this stillness

I had been ordered to recover.

The hills were gold with late summer;

my rooms were two, plus a small kitchen,

situated upstairs in the back of a cottage

at the end of the Herrengasse.

From my window I could see onto the courtyard

where a linden tree twined skyward—

leafy umbilicus canted toward light,

warped in the very act of yearning—

and I would feed on the sun as if that alone

would dismantle the silence around me.

At first I raged. Then music raged in me,

rising so swiftly I could not write quickly enough

to ease the roiling. I would stop

to light a lamp, and whatever I’d missed—

larks flying to nest, church bells, the shepherd’s

home-toward-evening song—rushed in, and I

would rage again.

I am by nature a conflagration;

I would rather leap

than sit and be looked at.

So when my proud city spread

her gypsy skirts, I reentered,

burning towards her greater, constant light.

Call me rough, ill-tempered, slovenly—I tell you,

every tenderness I have ever known

has been nothing

but thwarted violence, an ache

so permanent and deep, the lightest touch

awakens it. . . . It is impossible

to care enough. I have returned

with a second Symphony

and 15 Piano Variations

which I’ve named Prometheus,

after the rogue Titan, the half-a-god

who knew the worst sin is to take

what cannot be given back.

I smile and bow, and the world is loud.

And though I dare not lean in to shout

Can’t you see that I’m deaf?—

I also cannot stop listening.

I hear he’s a wild man, a proletarian

who forgets to shave and rejects tutelage;

who’ll dare nobility to trespass wherever

he decides to take his constitutionals,

but at the keyboard a wonder.

So I am exactly where I need to be,

tuning my instrument with Vienna’s finest

on a sun-blown April afternoon. I’ve made

the rounds, Baron to Count to Prince,

had my letter of introduction passed on tray after tray

like an after-dinner drink. It’s all a bit dizzying—

the lilting queries, coifed heads bobbing

in murmured goodwill; I watch late light

soften the stucco into creamy arabesques

as polite chatter swirls around me, whirls and dips

until I feel I’m being slowly stirred by a celestial

coffee spoon. At last! Schuppanzigh

moves toward the foyer, maneuvering his gut

past a mahogany secretaire and two nattering poufs

to welcome—too late!—his friend

who bursts into view, a squat invasionary force

not quite as dark as me—in coffee-speak

a Kleiner Goldener, Small Gold

to my Big Brown—but pocked, burly;

a dancing bear who’ll refuse to entertain,

who’d ignore the yanked chain until

they slit him for a coat. He’s clapping

shoulders now, shaking hands, moving forward

as the room expands, laughing. And why not?

This is his party, after all; we are here

to play him—this ugly, flushed little man

everyone calls “The Moor”—

although not to his face

nor, I suspect, within my earshot.

A lunatic angel has descended on Vienna!

No sooner had I given up

on the violin as no more

than a tiny, querulous beast

suited solely for dilettante monarchs

and their peg-leg street beggars,

do I make the acquaintance

of George Polgreen Brischdauer,

mulatto musician/magician most monstrous!

After such delicious execution

of an afternoon’s program

so decidedly pedestrian,

there’s nothing to be done but repair

to a neighboring Wirtschaft

where—noch ’n Maß, Mädl!—I fear

I must revise my former assessment:

though dipped in ink, this Jacob

has grappled the shining messenger

for a glimpse of heaven

and won the battle: Entirely master

of his instrument, he climbs the strings

agile as the monkeys from his father’s land.

Ah, Immortality has a new-wrought,

human face. How I love my handsome,

brash new friend!—this twilit stranger

who has given me myself again.

So then why not everything and more,

and all at once? Four strings on a chord

with the silence beyond, solo and chorus,

the declaimed and the whispered;

all that I know and know I am losing,

have been losing,

have lost,

lost. . . .

Harder to play long

than fast. It’s more than stretching

a line—suspension is

what we yearn for,

that delicate fulcrum between crash

and sheer evaporation, a dissipating breeze.

To levitate strands of melodic sound

across all the mired avenues

we barge along, daily—this shining wire

so light, so strong, we can just make out

(there!—there it goes) and follow,

slip note by note along

and fly—float—

in that radiant web.

Adagio sostenuto. Sustained slowness.

Not water, but the invisible current

a dove’s wing skims. Not air but

the agency that stirs it.

Not light but spark—no,

the dark thread between sparks,

how your eye can read

a firefly’s glimmering trail

while the rest of you is long gone,

darting leaf to leaf,

touching down

as the piano,

poised to intercept

that bright cursive, descends growling,

with a meatier

deliquescence . . .

He frightens me. I’ve never heard music

like this man’s, this sobbing

in the midst of triumphal chords,

such ambrosial anguish,

jigs danced on simmering coals.

Oh, I can play it well enough—hell,

I’ve been destined to travel these impossible

switchbacks, but it’s as if I’m skating

on his heart, blood tracks

looping everywhere, incarnadine

dips and curves . . .

I’m not making sense.

You’re making ultimate sense

he seems to say, nodding

his rutted, heroic brow.

As usual, nothing to transcribe

until I’m shaken out of bedclothes

and into the predawn chill:

Schnell, schnell, ich hab’s!—meaning

it was in his head and I must prise it out.

I had quite given up and gone to bed,

thinking This time he’s gone too far;

he’s done in and will have to feign

ague or a cough. After all, the night before!

No—the morning of, with the concert

not midday but at 7 ante meridiem, and B.

in bed, propped

in a mound of blotched papers, humming.

Copy the violin part of the first Allegro quickly.

If it weren’t for poor Bridgetower,

perched in the corner like an enormous crow,

fiddling the air and grinning with fear,

I’d throw down my pen and exit this madness—

genius, yes, but surely madness for any common man

to endure. . . .

Pale light squeezing

through the shutter-cracks washes us gray.

Even Bridgetower has transubstantiated—

ghost or vampire, hard to tell.

That’s it, then. Our Blue Hour calls.

Let the devil take us if he can.

Spectator One

Heavenly, to escape the city’s poisons

and breathe honey, honey, honey!

All praise Morning’s cathedral,

the ranks of noble linden presiding:

May we be privileged to pass through

their green light and feathered fragrance

with tipped hats and mute nods,

Amen!

The British Ambassador

. . . There goes Schuppanzigh, huffing up the aisle

in his entrepreneurial trappings.

Dear God, the man expands weekly!

Ah, the Archduke. And Prince Lobkowitz,

poor soul . . . such an unsightly specimen

and feels just as miserable as he looks.

I’d have ended it years ago, gone out like a man.

Spectator Two

Curious beginning—solo violin,

reminiscent of Bach but wilder, a supplication—

and the piano’s reply is almost a lover’s,

a bird on a cliff returning its true mate’s call.

Child

He moves around too much.

He’s like a poplar in the wind!

Spectator Three

For a savage he plays quite nicely.

As for his figure—tall, slim,

dare I say elegant? I’d heard

he was a charmer, but never thought

chimney soot applied to countenance

could be considered handsome.

Spectator Two

What a furious storm he rides!

And Beethoven listing side to side

in accord with the gale,

bobbing that Rumpelstiltskin head

as if to say “Well done, my boy.” . . .

That’s it—a father to his prodigal son,

come home at last.

British Ambassador

To call this a sonata is obscene.

A Presto is presto and Adagio . . .

well, slow is meant to stay slow.

This Beethoven is as loopy as they say—

imagine, insulting the Prince

when he simply requested a song,

smashing figurines, dashing off

in the middle of dinner!

Spectator One

I thought that infernal back-and-forth

would never cease. A concert’s meant

for reverie, to drift away

on nature’s curative susurrations . . .

ah, a Theme and Variations—

that’s more like it.

Child

I like his waistcoat.

How can he see out

from all that darkness?

Adagio sostenuto / Presto / Tempo primo

I step out.

I step out into silence.

I step out to take

my place; my place is silence

before I lift the bow and draw

a fingerwidth of ache upon the air.

This is what it is like

to be a flame: furious

but without weight, breeze

sharpening into wind, a bright gust

that will blind, flatten all of you—

yet tender,

somewhere inside

tender. If you could see me

now, Father, you would cry—though

you wept easily, as I remember,

and even so it was manly,

the way that thick black fist

daubed your cheek

with those extravagant sleeves

quivering.

I prefer to stand,

cheek cushioned, and soothe her

as I pull the sobs out,

gently . . . yes, you hear it.

You who made me can hear it—

just as he’s making me

hear it now, so that I can

pull it from her.

Andante con Variazioni

Thank you. It was a privilege. You are so kind.

It is all his doing; I am merely the instrument.

To have the honor of this première . . .

a beauty of a piece, indeed.

What an honor! Countess, I am enchanted.

I only wish I could better express my gratitude

in your lovely language: Vielen Dank.

It is all his—why, thank you, sir. I am speechless.

Gern geschehen, Madame; did I say that correctly?

(God I sound like my father.)

I believe he is pleased. I sincerely hope so . . .

but you are kindness incarnate. No, my privilege entirely.

Herr van Beethoven is indeed a Master, and Wien

an empress of a city. My apologies—

I only meant that she is . . . magnificent.

(Ludwig, get me out of here!)

If this world could stop

for a moment

and see me;

if I could step out

into the street and become

one of them,

one of anything,

I would sing—

no, weep right here—to simply

be and be and be . . .