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The Eighth and Thirteenth The eighth of Shostakovich, Music about the worst Horror history offers, They played on public radio Again last night. In solitude I sipped my wine, I drank That somber symphony To the vile lees. The composer Draws out the minor thirds, the brass Tumbles overhead like virgin logs Felled from their forest, washing downriver And the rivermen at song. Like ravens Who know when meat is in the offing, Oboes form a ring. An avalanche Of iron violins. At Leningrad During the years of siege Between bombardment, hunger, And three subfreezing winters, Three million dead were born Out of Christ's bloody side. Like icy Fetuses. For months One could not bury them, the earth And they alike were adamant. The dead were stacked like sticks until May's mud When, of course, there was pestilence. But the music continues. it has no other choice. Peer in as far as you like, it stays Exactly as bleak as now. The composer Opens his notebook. Tyrants like to present themselves as patrons of the arts. That's a well known fact. But tyrants understand nothing about art. Why? because tyranny is a perversion and a tyrant is a pervert. He is attracted by the chance to crush people, to mock them, stepping over corpses... And so, having satisfied his perverted desires, the man becomes a leader, and now the perversions continue because power has to be defended against madmen like yourself. For even if there are no such enemies, you have to invent them, because otherwise you can't flex your muscles completely, you can't oppress the people completely, making the blood spurt. And without that, what pleasure is there in power? The composer Looks out the door of his dacha, it's April, He watches farm children at play, He forgets nothing. For the thirteenth - I slip its cassette into my car Radio - They made Kiev's jews undress After a march to the suburb, Shot the hesitant quickly, Battered some of the lame, And screamed at everyone. Valises were taken, would Not be needed, packed So abruptly, tied with such Frayed rope. Soldiers next Killed a few more. The living ones, Penises of the men like string, Breasts of the women bobbling As at athletics, were told to run Through a copse, to where Wet with saliva The ravine opened her mouth. Marksmen shot the remainder Then, there, by the tens of thousands, Cleverly, so that bodies toppled In without lugging. An officer Strode upon the dead, Shot what stirred. How it would feel, such uneasy footing, even wearing boots that caressed one's calves, leather and lambswool, the soles thick rubber - Such the music's patient inquiry. What then is the essence of reality? of the good? The mind's fuse sputters, The heart aborts, it smells like wet ashes, The hands lift to cover their eyes, Only the music continues. We'll try, For the first movement, A full chorus. The immediate reverse of Beethoven. An axe between the shoulder blades Of Herr Wagner. People knew about Babi Yar before Yevtushenko's poem, but they were silent. And when they read the poem, the silence was broken. Art destroys silence. I know that many will not agree with me, and will point out other, more noble aims of art. They'll talk about beauty, grace, and other high qualities. But you won't catch me with that bait. I'm like Sobakevich in Dead Souls: you can sugarcoat a toad and I still won't put it in my mouth. Most of my symphonies are tombstones, said Shostakovich. All poets are Yids, said Tsvetaeva. The words never again Clashing against the words Again and again — That music. Cosi Fan Tutte: Of Desire and Delight I 1761-1769 I might here take the opportunity of entertaining the public with a story such as probably appears but once in a century, and which in the domain of music has perhaps never yet appeared in such a degree of the miraculous; I might describe the wonderful genius of my son. --Leopold Mozart, “Preliminary Notice” to the 2nd edition of his Violinschule, 1769 Because Desire is a tomcat rubbing up Against a cook’s leg, childhood a chemise Unlaced to suckle you, boyhood a room In which your hands discover a complete Language to entertain yourself and them, Whose lexicon and syntax seemingly Lift through the wooden keys and offer touch To fingertips you offer, let them come To pleasure Papa too. What is it like To reach and feel something reach in response, Desiring your desire to seek and find? Between your lessons, Papa wants to know. So! It is like dream-walking in a wood, Aware that you yourself create stately Beeches and oaks ahead as you proceed: You sniff the air, a cuckoo chirps, a leaf Twirls silver, sunlight splashes between limbs, An acorn drops, a gold ray strikes your shirt. When you perceive you have produced that ray, That oak and cuckoo, from the mind’s brown seed, It humbles you and crams you with a pride You cannot then forget, cannot reveal But in the language, gold, articulate, Already known for certain by your hands. II 1789 Apart from the fact that at the moment I am not in a position to pay you back this sum, my confidence in you is so boundless that I dare to implore you to help me out with a hundred florins until next week… --Wolfgang Mozart to Michael Puchberg, 1788 Because Delight is a vessel upon a sea Smoothed by a halcyon and immortal breath, Whose passengers are young, do not know death, Do not lack coin, manners, or a bright Confidence in their own enlightenment, Who love like figures in a gallant dance, Rolling eyes upward if an elder prates Of God and duty, for do not the Estates General proclaim the rights of man, and does not Civilization without discontent Prepare itself for fresh prosperity, Fresh liberty? Wolfgang, my lad, because Munich and Prague delight to honor you Yet do not pay well, and because it’s true Papa is dead and life’s a masquerade, Here’s a libretto lets you trumpet what Fidelity and honor signify Among the crumbling privileged: suspend Your horns and strings from heaven’s fulcrum like A rope swing with a pretty woman on it Pushed by a pretty man in hose and wig Who is untroubled by a father, who Need not beg florins from inferiors. Let your drums beat and let your fiddles play In strict obedience to the sacred laws Of gravity, levity, of auburn curls And skyblue slippers on the buxom girl Who swings while singing to enchant her friend, Architecture is frozen music, and Music itself a palace of melting ice. |
"Cosi Fan Tutte: Of Desire and Delight" (excluding the quotes by Leopold Mozart and Wolfgang Mozart, which are in the public domain) from No Heaven, by Alicia Suskin Ostriker, © 2005. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press. "The Eighth and Thirteenth" from The Little Space: Poems Selected and New, 1968-1998, by Alicia Suskin Ostriker, © 1998. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press. |
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