Rita Dove
VIENNA SPRING
VIENNA SPRING
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 . . . .