THE GODS

I always seem to have tickets

in the third or fourth balcony

(a perch for irony;

a circle of hell the Brits

tend to call “the gods”),

and peer down from a tier

of that empyrean

at some tuxedoed insect

scrabbling on a piano.

Some nights there’s a concerto,

and ranks of sound amass

until it’s raining upward

(violin bows for lightning)

from a black thundercloud.

A railing has been installed

precisely at eye level—

which leads the gaze, frustrated,

still higher to the vault

of the gilt-encrusted ceiling,

where a vaguely understood

fresco that must be good

shows nymphs or angels wrapped

in windswept drapery.

Inscribed like the gray curls

around the distant bald spot

of the eminent conductor,

great names—DA VINCI PLATO

WHITTIER DEBUSSY—

form one long signature,

fascinatingly random,

at the marble base of the dome.

It’s more the well-fed gods

of philanthropy who seem

enshrined in all their funny,

decent, noble, wrong

postulates, and who haunt

these pillared concert halls,

the tinkling foyers strung

with chandeliered ideals,

having selected which

dated virtues—COURAGE

HONOR BROTHERHOOD—rated

chiseling into stone;

having been quite sure

that virtue was a thing

all men sought, the sublime

a mode subliminally

fostered by mentioning

monumentally.

All men. Never a woman’s

name, of course, although

off-shoulder pulchritude

gets featured overhead—

and abstractions you might go

to women for, like BEAUTY

JUSTICE LIBERTY.

Yet at the intermission,

I generally descend

the spiral stairs unjustly

for a costly, vacant seat

I haven’t paid for. Tonight

I’ve slipped into D9.

The lights dim. Warm applause

and, after a thrilling pause,

some stiff-necked vanities

for a moment float away—

all the gorgeous, nameless,

shifting discordances

of the world cry aloud; allowed

at last, I close my eyes.