Sonata Mulattica

Not much left to do

but pay your respects

—bow, genuflect?—

to the ochre façades of a city

you’d wanted to conquer . . .

no, make that seduce.

Well, what of it? Turns out

the Grand Old Man

has a temper, plus some

addled idea of honor

that overblown barmaid

wouldn’t have known

what to do with

if it had slapped her

on her extraordinary ass.

Vorsicht: Forget

the Dirndl. She’s a picked bone.

And hadn’t the Old Fart

leapt up from the keyboard

to embrace you

in front of everyone?

Mein lieber Bursch,

everyone listening, isn’t that

what he had called you?

Time to leave

this tiered confection

of a city, this coquette

who pretends to sip

then slings the rest away,

who has spit you out

like coffee dregs. . . .

Why, they’re quit of me—

they’ve rinsed the cup.

As if on cue,

it begins to rain.

Silver ribbons stripped loose from their implacable

eyelets, fingers stuttering through muffled lace,

skittering from the keyboard in disgrace.

Whimpered accompaniment to a tongued nipple.

Cascade-glimmer of a chromatic scale.

Tiny bone clack against porcelain, roast squab

or dove dripping from china plates; a sweating pail

of ice, kicked over by a horse. Ach, to be robbed

in one’s sleep, robbed between a sip and a laugh!

(Because we’re wading through wreckage, we’re

not even listening to all the crash and clatter—

chords wrenched from their moorings, smashed

etudes, arpeggios glistening as they heave and sink.)

Ciphers, the lot of them. Their money, their perfumed stink.

1.

What remains? Not much.

Gilt, and columns he recognizes

as Ionic, cool shafts of white cloud

peeling now, the dark oak rotting

beneath.

(To a boy it was

sheer phantasmagoria,

mystery’s faint perfume;

glimmering gowns, fans set aflutter

by invisible feminine engines,

and the chimney sweep surveying us

from his corner, quiet watchfulness

under a hooded eye.

I saw the gridwork of power

and thought it was Delight.)

Esterháza, the Hungarian Versailles.

2.

Heat, of course. It grew a steady crop of dulling

from May until Guy Fawkes embers cooled;

not pleasant, a heat that declared

Enemy and a foreign occupation in invisible march

sweeping bats up from the hay bales

on the road to Széplak,

a black lace unfurling

against the molten scrim

of day’s end . . .

(The puppet theater was my favorite

hiding place, dark and glimmering,

a cave inside

a treasure chest. I sang to myself.

It was like being buried in jewels.)

3.

Silence where once there were ceaseless

operas, banquets, shooting parties;

fancy-dress balls at the end of which

the aristocracy would repair to assorted terraces

to watch the domestics and villagers

treated to food and drink.

Along the roadside

booths, magicians:

To observe common folk

in their Sunday Best

considered the culmination

of festivities, a welcome

“amusement.”

4.

Steps chipped and sagging where the revelers climbed them.

The footmen in maroon, gloved, bowing.

What a majestic blood bath,

complete with epaulets

adrift in golden froth!

(on the road

dwarf Johann,

weeping,

tiny

under his bulging pack)

5.

Barbiere di Siviglia.

Paisiello’s L’amor contrastato.

Cimarosa’s Il credulo and L’impresario in angustie.

Thwarted Love. The Dupe.

The Manager in Distress.

Who needs a fortune-teller

when there’s a libretto around?

6.

My life in title pages (Gothic script).

We have played our concerts here.

(I am finished.) Why drum up

more opportunities to be fawned over?

I am done with this “concertizing.”

(Brother, do not smirk. Gloating does not become you.)

Forgive me, Mother. The trip has addled

my manners. Vienna was . . . exhausting.

(Circles within circles.) Oh, beautiful

too, of course, but rather too falsely animated.

(Arrogant swill, with their Archdukes and sandstone palisades.)

Yes, “pretentious” is the word.

(I am a fool. I have lost it all.)

He was great. Is great.

He hadn’t finished the score and the copyist

nearly lost his wits scribbling madly

the night before.

My part?

Oh, portions were illegible,

but I didn’t mind. I understood him.

I merely listened, and followed.

He frightened me, but I followed.

The concert was a sensation. I was feted.

We went out on the town.

(Weren’t we comrades? True brothers,

who can drink and curse the night through

yet swear loyalty all the more fiercely

come morning?)

Yes, the gardens were splendid.

Being further south, summer was already upon us

and everything brimmed with color; you could say

(yes, brother, say it) the blooms were flamboyant

to the point of insolence, almost unbearable

in their profusion.

Oh, I’m babbling.

Pay me no mind.

A room is safe harbor. No treachery creaks the stair.

I’ve locked the door; I will not hear them knocking.

Anyone come calling can call themselves blue.

There was a time I liked nothing more than walking

the woods above Vienna, tramping forest paths

to find a patch of green laid square and plush.

I’d sit, tucked in a tapestry of birdsong, and wait

for my breath to settle; let the sun burnish my skin until

the winged horn of the post coach summoned me home.

And then everything began to sound like

the distant post horn’s gleaming trail. . . .

I was careless then, I squandered the world’s utterance.

And when my muddy conspirator swayed and quaked

like the tallest poplar tossed by the lightest wind

so that I could read his playing, see my score

transcribed on the air, on the breeze—I breathed

his soul through my own fingers and gave up

trying to listen; I watched him and felt

the music—it was better than listening,

it was the last pure sound . . .

(My emperor, emptied of honor,

has crowned himself with gold.)

Why did that savage say it? Why did I hear

what he said, why did I mind what I heard?

Good days, bad days, screech and whistle:

Sometimes I lay my head on the piano

to feel the wood breathing, the ivory sigh.

I know Lichnowski listens some evenings;

he climbs the four flights and hunkers on

the stoop. Odd: I can hear his wheezing

and not this page as it rips—the splitting

so faint a crackle, it could be the last

embers shifting in the grate. . . .

Style and flattery will get you the life

you deserve: one table setting after another,

beer and cards in the park at Ranelagh,

some lame poet enthusing over

the pale moon under the pricking stars

while Lord Petersham glimpses himself

in the sheen of his boots and smiles

as he pulls out the snuffbox for this very day.

At least the unnamed gentleman who

each evening squires a different doll

from his own bisque collection

knows that’s all he wants.

Does all that powder make them happier?

There’s the Duchess of Devonshire, snooting past

with her lap dog, as big a yawn as ever.

Look at sly little Miss Lady Wilson prattling on;

she’s absolutely smitten with the divertimento!

Smitten: as if this were a love affair

and she needs to be hit between the eyes

to actually feel something. Divertimenti

do not smite: only God does.

Here’s a modest proposal: Shut your eyes

for five minutes and listen. Easy music,

yet it demonstrates respectable employment

of chordal modulation and is utterly

capable of transporting a weary soul

out of this frenzy and onto the plain

of perfect comprehension—and there is

your bliss, flowing beneath all the fretting;

there is your ecstasy & ruin & entitlement,

all the religion you’ll ever need.

He was a stormy pedagogue,

always interrupting the prettiest airs—

even his own compositions,

which I was given to understand

he did not permit everyone to play.

I pounced upon each chord

with the ignorant ardor of youth;

I was sixteen, after all, and he was already

famous in Vienna, where such

approbations are stingily accorded.

He insisted on a light touch. He himself

was a wild man, ripping the music

from my stumbling fingers

and stomping about as the pages

fluttered sadly earthwards,

like the poor pheasants dropped over

the hunting fields of the Prater.

Rest assured I soon learned to play

more lightly! He was pleased, then,

and a quick soft smile would crimp

that dismal chunk of a face,

a sight just slightly less repugnant

than his rages. He was exceedingly

unlovely, yes, but with a threadbare

elegance—much as a servant,

envisioning gentility, might

avail himself of the scraps and dashes

from the milliner’s basket.

Sometimes I could coax him

to the pianoforte, where

he would bow his head,

eyes closed, and wait—

as if the silence spoke only to him;

before playing without notes

music of such inexpressible beauty,

I thought to breathe and disturb the air

would break his heart. He would not

consent to payment, but accepted the linens

I had sent up to his rooms. Poor man—

he thought I had sewn them myself.

Base level’s this: A day like all others,

blessed with sun, or not . . . the heart’s

in place, for once. Occasionally

the world offers a kindness, and I return

the favor. Ecstasy for these small services—

the proper temperature of tea, the cream introduced

tenderly. Fair enough, that.

So I’m content. As in: comforted by

the mere presence of a heartbeat.

For once not aglow with performance,

nor dingy with standing out.

Var. I.

Sun’s out, and all the tender ladies are in light cloth, frills buoyant

on bosoms, each flippant tit (that’s what they are, you bitches)

an accent or grace note, if you will, to . . . well, I won’t offend.

Not even in thought; I must behave the proper gentleman.

After all, I’ll not forget what I saw at the traveling fair

my companion sought to shield from me: two monkeys

in identical red waistcoats, one with a toy violin . . .

Var. II.

The game is played with the eyes—quick flicks

when the hand is languid, lifting the lady’s

to kiss, but when the arm whips out in the flare of

a proper and deep bowstroke . . . that’s when to look up

and linger. We attend to table, our banter a cover,

storm high in the trees: each delicacy noted, tasted,

eyes bobbing safely above neckline while the words—

ah trippingly, sir, trippingly.

Var. III. Minore

My bed is a curse to me, it reeks of dreams,

darkness complete. The city thuds on—

clangs, bells, whipcrack and whinny,

the swishing grunts of the poor scampering for curfew;

I can hear the straw under their weary limbs.

I can hear this silence, too, silence I’m meant to fill

with chatter, obsequies, and O Lord music . . .

I do think music is a grace but it is as well

the eye of God—baleful,

glittery with his glorious outrage.

Not mine. Not mine. Give me a ball

and I will bounce it before you,

masters. Glorious in my red coat.

Var. IV. Maggiore

I’d pluck an eye out. Let it roll cobble to cobble

like a pebble tumbling, kicked up by a coach run too fast.

I pluck my string instead and it is a light sound, dilettante.

I do not like the tease of a string engaged so curtly.

Picked at. But that long breath of a bow

drawn across it, that feathered sigh swelling to a moan,

to ecstasy—no bird nor mammal utters thus.

Arco. It is a human cry, a susurration that compels the blood

to spill for a sunset or a delicious pair of eyes, an elfin ankle.

Why do I throb so unseemly? I am not a prince

of anything but darkness. I must settle my humors.

When I go for a stroll and happenstance takes me

inevitably to the Thames, there

I can stand and watch the ashen waters

rippling the boaters’ oars, and I feel

for hours afterwards

a sustenance. That is the story

I wish to read, the line of song I’d follow into thin air. . . .

When I was a boy, I snipped off

a choirmate’s pigtail

just to see if the scissors were sharp.

I was caned, then expelled.

I had no prospects.

My voice had cracked.

The streets were cold and lacked music.

And now you have arrayed yourselves

into a thorny hedge around my home.

You have been placed in the streets

by a pugnacious little man

who has learned to stomp his foot

until the continent quakes.

I am weary of his chronic percussion.

My emperor has fled; across the city

rooftops are breaking out with white flags

like pustules blotching a beloved face.

I have never been good-looking

but have always dressed carefully.

Now that I am old, your leader

wants to keep me safe. Spare me

your crude fanfare, Honor Guard!

I have starved in these streets with nothing

but a splintered voice

and the angels inside my head,

found Paradise while dozing

before the sparse embers

in an old friend’s only grate,

the warm milk thick on my tongue;

even now it is the grandest

taste I have known.

In the end, it was a good thing

to have had no influences;

every day now for as many days as are given me

I will rise and dress, and go to the clavier

to play my folk song, my final oratorio

so those who need to will hear.

Admit it, toy soldiers

in your fine blue and gold trappings,

your white-strapped chests:

Even your ears are humming,

even your red plumes shake.

I have always believed that love is

an overflowing, an abundance one needs

to be rid of, to pour into another. That other

can be a man or a woman, dog or hillock

or headdress of ostrich feathers; it can be

sculpture or shoreline or even a sunless day

seeping its silvery light over the Thames.

It may arrive quietly, a moment between moments

in the river of talk, after the hot soup but before

the mutton; or it can be the mutton, too—

its ginger tang and musky finish.

However it comes, the sensation is

massive, inconvenient, undeniable.

If one were to banish extravagance,

all longing would take on edges. Witness

the general, poised on the smoking field,

as he surveys the strewn body bits

with a ghoulish mix of rue and relish;

he has won another snippet of territory

and is hungry for more. Love is rounder

and less dignified; if love brandished a sword

I would kneel and bare my neck.

Some call me gaudy, capricious; it’s true

that I drool when I drink and cannot walk the path

from bed to breakfast tray without wheezing.

I’m gouty, corseted, flatulent—but it’s all

because I cannot refuse a thing its chance

to shine, to sigh or deliquesce. So let there be

stars in every glass and fireworks over the park,

spun sugar pagodas on mirrored lakes, diamonds,

a footman in ancient armor, crimson drapery;

and down the center of the banquet table

set for two hundred in the Gothic conservatory

an actual stream—pure water cascading

between banks of real moss with tiny flowers—

and fish flashing, gold and silver, down the sluice.

More pineapples, more cherry wine!

Tell the other two thousand guests

gathered in Carlton House

that we are here to show the world

England’s swaggering heart;

and that I intend to celebrate all century,

until something even grander arrives—

more outrageous and beautiful—to swallow me

in its monstrous, invisible embrace.

I kneel, but not in sufferance,

not in faith. There is a fulcrum

beyond which the bow tip wobbles;

no ardency nor forceful wrist

can make it sing. I am there,

at wit’s balancing point. Music

pours through the blackened nave,

hollowing my bones to fit

the space it needs. It needs

so much of me, the soul’s

wicked cartridge emptying

as fast as it fills. I kneel

because even the reed bends

before God’s laughter

splits it, and the storm

moves on.

Music played for the soul is sheer pleasure;

to play merely for pleasure is nothing

but work. Is anyone listening? I am

the First Violinist of the Prince Regent’s

Prized Private Orchestra, playing

for your satisfaction—except

His Mad Majesty’s son is a gluttonous fool,

and I’m as invisible as a statue of a moor.

Laughter drifts between the staves

like sunlight through the iron-black pikes

of Windsor’s Middle Ward, back

when I was beginning: the courtyard

a blazing field of chipped stones

combed into swirls, like the yellow dust

at Esterházy: matted down, awaiting

the guests’ arrival . . . everything

done for the pleasure of others,

so they might exclaim All this

for me? Such extravagance!—

as it unrolled beneath their dainty steps.

Stop bitching: There’s worse work

and crueler wardens. In the end,

each note sent pearling

over their dull heads

is mine—although they believe

they own it all, and for me

to claim even a portion of it

is to be their servant.

was something to be happy about,

wasn’t it? Four days in a short cold month

when even one’s breath, upon exit,

instantly condensed into a shower of snow.

The sky was black. The river shone,

a marble corridor dulled by its awestruck traffic—

charred coal, crushed underfoot and smeared

the length of this vast, dim spine of ice

dubbed City Street by the amused vendors

—as if those walking there, terrified to drop

too bold a footfall, slid booth to booth

instead. Banked fires hurled sooty issue

against the frigid air so that smoke hung

nearly gelatinous, in wreaths of drab warmth

from Blackfriars Bridge to Three Cranes Stairs;

it was difficult to breathe. Games abounded—

skittles for the squeamish, bowling for the bold,

donkey rides for the ladies and dancing for all.

A small sheep was roasted whole on the ice

and plates and knives laid out, with penny loaves;

also an elephant led across the river by rope

just below Blackfriars—wasn’t that

a sign? The Fair began on a Tuesday,

followed by Candlemas, which meant

even if the coaches still weren’t running

the northern roads and yet another man

was found frozen near Dove’s Inn, having

drunk freely there, then fallen into a snowbank—

all the same, winter’s grip was loosening. Soon

there’d be no more sleighs-for-hire come evening,

no more Punch and no Judy duking it out

for the children crowding the makeshift stalls;

and as for the three men propped up

on hay bales when the gin tent broke loose

and skimmed downriver—

before ice water sluiced over their boots

and the sweat broke out, wasn’t it

the best damn drunk ever?

From Temple to Westminster, a curve of soft fire

alive on the ice. Lanterns bobbing. No time

for din and rabble when the King was calling,

when one was nearly a Professor of Music, when . . .

Christ, the night’s bitter.

Move on, before you start to enjoy

freezing to death.