The victorious soldier

Giuseppe Verdi - "Celeste Aida," from Aida
with Placido Domingo

I wish I could bead bracelets
to adorn the wrists of parents
who never sent their sons to war,
who think wars fall outside of
the realms of last resort,
those who put indomitable
wedges of compassion
into the violent monolith -
I wish my self was bowing
to them instead of throwing up
this permanently closed fist
of bare, bloody victory.

  

The limits undone, by Neile Graham

Giuseppe Verdi - Kyrie Eleison, Requiem Aeternam
NBC Symphony Orchestra, Arturo Toscanini conductor (1940)

I call it sorrow that makes me leave
this house; unfolding the cloth that covers
the windows, I am closing the eyes of the dead.
It's grey, raining outside and it suits me well,
pulling the door to, turning the key in the familiar
lock one last time.
...............................This time I forgot to say
goodbye to each room, like I did as a child,
so I step through the soggy leaves and circle
the house trying to make it whole.

If I knew the words to make the sort
of spell this needs I would say them. Instead I walk
to the car, try not to look back.

Suddenly I'm miles away in the rain
on the highway and can't remember how
I got this far; the windshield wipers
scrape in front of my eyes and I'm driving inland -
away from the land's end,
from the house at the edge of it.

If I stare out the attic window at the night sea
I cannot quite make out where shore ends
and ocean begins: the limits of everything
undone in the darkness just as on the highway
grey road dissolves to grey sky.

I am leaving nothing, take the weight of my life
down this road, though I thought I had left
it behind. Sorrow, like darkness, like rain,
blurs all borders and everything comes flooding in -

I greet each room like a child.


from Spells for clear vision (Brick Books, 1994)
thank you Prospero for the music

After great pain, a formal feeling comes, by Emily Dickinson

Giuseppe Verdi - Lacrymosa dies illa, Messa da Requiem
Anna Tomowa-Sintow, Agnes Baltsa, José Carreras, José Van Dam; Wiener Philharmoniker
Balgarska Chorova Kapela Svetoslav Obretenov and Herbert von Karajan

After great pain, a formal feeling comes --
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs
The stiff Heart questions, was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

The Feet, mechanical, go round --
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought --
A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone --

This is the Hour of Lead --
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow --
First -- Chill -- then Stupor -- then the letting go --


Giuseppe Verdi - Lux aeterna, Messa da Requiem


poem from PoemHunter.com
for music info see resonances

Fugue, by Daniel Halpern

Giuseppe Verdi - Prelude to Act I, La Traviata

A child asks endlessly about dying,
not death, but some fixed point,
not the state and estate of death.

It's about the invisible net
of infinity cast over
so small a frame of reference.

For the rest of us the net fills gradually in,
like an image coming up coyly but decisively
in a darkroom tray of chemicals.

We took a trip to the House of Reptiles
where I looked into the humorless eyes
of the albino reticulated python

set in their cold skull like precious, unpolished stones--
eyes like the precipice that invites
the wary to leap, pulled over by reverse phobia.

For three dollars we were allowed the chance
to face death eye to eye, inches
and a thickness of glass away,

the reptile simultaneously metaphor
and pathway out of this life,
coiled, patient, solemnly inquisitive.

Not the act of dying,
but the estate of limbo--
the days run out, no longer oneself.


from Something Shining: Poems (Knopf, 1999)

Open your eyes

Giuseppe Verdi - "Vendetta", from Rigoletto
with Tito Gobbi & Lina Pagliughi

Be careful-
waving your poem
sword can decimate
silkword scarves
and expose jugulars
that will drown us
in their burnt red
truth.

wishes for sons, by Lucille Clifton

Giuseppe Verdi - "Questa donna conoscete?", La Traviata
with Raina Kabaivanska & Piero Visconti

i wish them cramps.
i wish them a strange town
and the last tampon.
i wish them no 7-11.

i wish them one week early
and wearing a white skirt.
i wish them one week late.

later i wish them hot flashes
and clots like you
wouldn't believe. let the
flashes come when they
meet someone special.
let the clots come
when they want to.

let them think they have accepted
arrogance in the universe,
then bring them to gynecologists
not unlike themselves.


from poets.org

Lecture

Giuseppe Verdi - "Triumphal March", Aida

As I work to sharpen my knife,
kindly stop fidgeting and listen to
how much you'll enjoy being carved up.

You'll also rejoice in the knowledge
of the house your bones will make sturdy
and the bountiful lush garden
we'll be able to grow with your blood.

I know, you cannot picture it now,
but I've helped colleagues who have done it
and I'm pretty sure you can trust me
to get it right from the very first try.

I've observed and carefully noted
how we must start with the tongue -
we wouldn't want those words you don't mean
to hang about the house like mad rats.