Rita Dove
FIRST CONTACT
FIRST CONTACT
Ignaz Schuppanzigh’s apartments. A musical salon.
I hear he’s a wild man, a proletarian
who forgets to shave and rejects tutelage;
who’ll dare nobility to trespass wherever
he decides to take his constitutionals,
but at the keyboard a wonder.
So I am exactly where I need to be,
tuning my instrument with Vienna’s finest
on a sun-blown April afternoon. I’ve made
the rounds, Baron to Count to Prince,
had my letter of introduction passed on tray after tray
like an after-dinner drink. It’s all a bit dizzying ––
the lilting queries, coifed heads bobbing
in murmured goodwill; I watch late light
soften the stucco into creamy arabesques
as polite chatter swirls around me, whirls and dips
until I feel I’m being slowly stirred by a celestial
coffee spoon. At last! Schuppanzigh
moves toward the foyer, maneuvering his gut
past a mahogany secretaire and two nattering poufs
to welcome –– too late! –– his friend
who bursts into view, a squat invasionary force
not quite as dark as me–– in coffee-speak
a Kleiner Goldener, Small Gold
to my Big Brown–– but pocked, burly;
a dancing bear who’ll refuse to entertain,
who’d ignore the yanked chain until
they slit him for a coat. He’s clapping
shoulders now, shaking hands, moving forward
as the room expands, laughing. And why not?
This is his party, after all; we are here
to play him–– this ugly, flushed little man
everyone calls “The Moor”––
although not to his face
nor, I suspect, within my earshot.