Eternal Schumann:
Your head was born
Between the shadow
Of your  ghost
Daffodil and echo
Always running around
into the wrong guideline
Of your love for Brahms
I think of you in the madhouse
Skinned by demons
And raised by the angels
You remind me of the gloomy manifestation
Of pure love
And every note
From the concert in La
Gloriously dragging
All that energy and ceiling,
All that contained love
Haunting your holy peace
Snatching the muse
Of the sublime and vertical fabric
From the truth ground to sticks.
It's a heartbreaking era
And the corpse of Schumann the terrible
Has been resting for a century
In dizzying memory
Of the human
Already impoverished
For the departure of God
And abandoned
To their fate
To the last cadence
That you did not write
In the first delirium
From schizophrenia




R.

Catherine's Tango
Quiet moonless night lit only by the libido of a white cigarette
Do not
Do not be a poet
propose to a woman
and die with children on your
Denim Soul'd Lap
I am giving up
I am
disfiguring my Rifle
I am
unwashed clothes
tucked into the corner of the bed
where You and She and He and You
sleep
make love
speech
listen to the radio
when it
gives premarital birth
to Jazz C-section
when the radio
sticks its finger down its
electrical throat
attached to the wall
and
Digests Classical Master Pieces of Symphonies

I am 1:42am
an orange pill
2 pennies
3 quarters
a dime
a nickel
molding yogurt
a face sprouting weeds
a body
blooming old age

Tip Toe
unlock my
golden halted door to a chamber of
Lamps that bend and sigh
only to leave you
quite sad
quite misplaced in the sand
asking for water
but all we have
is cold coffee
it has been sitting out for
2 waltz
all of the ceiling's light bulbs
are awake
chattering quietly
like 5am suburbia birds
Pigeons
Crows
The one eyed red robin coasting south for a warm nest
watch out
Lovers are here to stay
they carry
knives and ****** bouquets

This board is not on the wall. It rests on a worktable against a wall. It’s almost the length of the table, perhaps a foot short. On top of the board its wooden frame makes a shelf ideal for photographs or cards to balance precariously, photographs and cards too precious to pin. Today there are five, yes they change from day to day, and today (from left to right) there’s an original drawing in walnut ink of a winter field, a photo of two children looking from a cliff top towards a peninsula’s end, a card called Autumn Spey from a lithograph by Angie Lewin, an invitation to a gallery opening, and a What’s On brochure – from another gallery – showing some unusual tapestry.

The Notice Board is 100 x 60 cm. The wooden frame is slight, probably home-made, but well-made, with a dark brown hessian surface. Not that you can see much of the surface as it is covered with stuff: photographs, images, poems, pictures, cards, quotations, a prayer, an origami bird, a doctor’s prescription, a piece of tapestry, an invitation, an address, lists galore, a cheque or two, a diagram (of a knot), a concert program. Not everything can be seen directly as many items are shared by a single pin and hidden four, even six, notices deep. Every so often the items are unpinned and consigned to a folder and filed, and so the process of choosing and pinning starts over again. This can happen after a holiday, returning uncluttered by days walking the cliff paths with only the quiet sea to gaze at and the cottage blissfully free of things known, things owned.  So when back at the desk, in front of the notice board, it seems right to be beginning again.

Mozart’s Linz Symphony is playing quietly in the background. It’s that time of day when music is sometimes allowed to frame work at this desk and blot out the going home noise of buses in the city street moving away from the stop three floors below. Linz, the capital of Upper Austria and now a large industrial city straddling the banks of the Danube, once gave its name to Linzertorte, a cake of jam, cloves, cinnamon, and almonds, and this remarkable symphony by Mozart. The composer had only just married his Constanza and wrote to his long suffering father:

When we reached the gates of Linz . . . , we found a servant waiting there to drive us to Count Thun's, at whose house we are now staying. I really cannot tell you what kindnesses the family are showering on us. On Tuesday, November 4, I am giving a concert in the theatre here and, as I have not a single symphony with me, I am writing a new one at break-neck speed, which must be finished by that time. Well, I must close, because I really must set to work.

And set to work he did. He had just 4 days to compose, write the parts (though Constanza helped), and rehearse an orchestra. Such is life for the working composer, even today. Maybe not a summons from a beneficent Count, but a phone-call from a producer with a deadline. It is the film or TV score to be composed at break-neck speed. And it can be done, believe me. It may not be sublime as Mozart, but it gets done: there are ways and means.

But this is today’s background, and as these words are written the gracious siciliano of the Symphony No.36 plays away. Such a tender confection.

Looking up at the notice board where does one start? Each pinned piece is a divertissement, an aide memoire to times, events, places, and people. It is a mixture of the colourful, the curious, the necessary, the unusual, the nostalgic, and the personally precious. These things are the qualifications required to occupy a place on this board.

But now Haydn takes over the musical background, Symphony No.88. No descriptive name here, just his wonderful music: his first symphony to score trumpets and timpani, and with more than a touch of Turkish in the Minuetto and Finale.

So close your eyes now (let’s listen to Haydn for a while), then slowly open them and choose from the notice board what first catches your attention.

It’s a coloured sketch of flowers on an A5 sheet of cartridge paper. It is outlined delicately in pen, coloured variously with pastels, green, orange, purple, red. The vase is a glass bowl. It’s set on a window-sill and there’s the frame of a window faintly rendered. There’s no artifice in the arrangement. These are flowers from a garden, picked and now firmly ****** into the bowl. Immediately the long, quiet east-facing room comes alive to colour. It’s in shade now the sun has moved since midday when the flowers arrived after a journey of 40 miles in a hot car wrapped in moist newspaper and silver foil. It is a special gift and its beauty remains vivid for days. When visitors visited gentle comments are made on their fresh colours.

At night when the room is only lit by a standard lamp standing by a pale yellow settee the flowers sleep in the darkness, holding a vivid memory of a day of colour and light. A recording of the Schumann quartets plays passionately during the ‘close to the end of summer’ evenings. Hands are held, and between movements there is an occasional exploratory kiss. Such was their collective fear of passion overcoming other endeavours . . .

In the early morning time when she slept in the room next door oblivious to his wakefulness he would enter the long studio room with its four windows to find the first sunlight patterning the floor. The flowers were wide-awake, their perfume rich in the still morningtime. He would stand entranced to see such beauty brought from her city garden; the first of many gifts he would come to treasure. His sketch was an amateur’s, but four summers past it continued to give much joy and dear memories. It had something of the solemnity of Mozart’s siciliano, and if an image could be said to have a right tempo, it had a right tempo, a gracefulness roughly hewn perhaps, but full of grace.

poor buick good dog we’re almost done bad moon bellyful of big dumb blond last line i want uh a memory yes before yes atomic foreskins pink & fresh yes hunger for the womb **** **** **** *** junk food ****** with a walkman playing schumann to dilate woman oranges have more delicacy oranges orages oral fruit caught in the act the memory here it is a certain man crippled since birth caught in the act *** without hands his only defense: today today is only the beginning this is only the beginning a sick man’s argument okay last line

while in the street already leaves are falling

****** with a radio
playing schumann to dilate
women

Gira
la negra,
gira
la luna,
gira
la negra luna,
sobre sí propia,
gira
la negra
luna
de ebonita,
gira la negra luna de ebonita
-sobre sí propia- y canta:

-¡Bah! ¡Canciones! Y músicas abstractas...!

Y, lo que canta, es la Música Viva!
Oye el Viaje de Invierno, de Franz Schubert,
y el Rey de los Alisos,
y El Doble y Ganímedes y Ante el mar,
y de Schumann, Amores de un poeta,
y de Dupare, Invitación al viaje
y La vida anterior...,
y de Chopín, Preludios y Nocturnos:

tú, soñador romántico; tú, doliente elegíaco.
Oye la voz serena,
la voz profunda oye
de Bach -añosa encina,
inmensurable selva, órgano él mismo y templo
de la harmonía-:

tú, sereno y profundo.

Y de Mozart el diáfano y sortílego,
y de Haydn y Franck, la cortesana
y la mística voz, inconfundibles,

tú, gustador de lo pulcro y etéreo.
Los Cánticos y Danzas de la Muerte,
y Sin sol, de Musorgski,

tú, angustiado, febril, hiperestésico;

y Borís Godunov, Borís Godunov, oye,
(bárbara gesta, miedo, sangre, lujuria y fausto)

tú, Sátrapa en los sueños...
Y, catador sutil de quintaesencias,
gusta la mediatinta debussyana,
pesquisidora de inusados timbres
y lontanos acordes, 1
en un dorado ambiente de calígine.
Y, borracho de lumbres y colores,
Óye, de Rímski, Antar y Xeherazada
y el Gallo de oro -vértigo y lascivia-:

mas, si de ritmos ebrio, tú, frenético
danzarín, danza todas las furias de Stravínski
-del sabio y del bufón mezcladas dósis-:
fino humor ricos timbres, forma clara 2
(sobria, o en concertado cataclismo).
Y oye, en la noche, y en Tristán e Iseo,
la voz vigía de Brangane, plena
de lo fatal, o el corno quejumbroso;
si no los Funerales de Sigfrido;
o el Tránsito al Valhalla, milagroso tumulto.
Y tú, plasmado en bronce, los vastos himnos oye,
óye las soberanas sinfonías
con que la voz del Sordo el orbe nutre!

Las acendradas síntesis:
sonatas y quátuors, insólito prodigio, filtros puros:

la Misa en re, misterio panteísta,
denso peán a la Naturaleza!

Y el trágico clangor de Coriolano...:

oye la voz del Indomado Prometeo,
oye la voz del Sordo, oye la voz del Sordo!
Gira la negra luna,
gira
sobre sí propia,
gira la negra luna de ebonita,
gira
la negra
luna
de ebonita
-sobre sí propia- y canta:
-Bah! Ficciones! Y músicas abstractas...!

Y, lo que canta, es la Música Misma!

Rhythms of Mother Earth
Those which to life give birth
The pulse of all her life
When disrupted cause strife

Why is it we feel better when we go outside?
What has Mother Earth that is not inside?

Everything is connected
                                       And, in turn affected
                                                        ­                 By that which causes disruption
                                                      ­                                                                 ­      Mainly, human corruption
Drop a pebble in a lake
All things affected by that wake
Of those energy waves emitted
Like those from a tower transmitted

Where have the butterflies and bees gone?
Those that took fancy flight above our lawn
Why have their numbers decreased?
And why have more become deceased?

What is this pulse, what is this beat?
That which surrounds us and is beneath our feet?

Mother Earth's heartbeat, herRESONANCE...7.83Hz (hertz)
The same rhythm with which humanity flirts

Circadian rhythm, day and night
Daily cycle of dark and light

A world, from the eye unseen
Yet perceived by those who are keen
Aware of our world which is synergetic
With waves that are light, electric and magnetic

What happens in a world without bees?
Does the fruit still fall from the trees?
Do we want to live without the beauty of flowers?
All for the incessant need for transmitting towers?

What is the ultimate price that we may pay
If we do not hold our cell phones an inch away
As waves lethal as high concentrations of uranium
Are pumped continuously into our cranium

Wireless hot spots become pervasive
Much like a species that is invasive
Birds migratory instincts disrupted
By those towers that have corrupted

That natural balance we have with our mother
A balance that cannot be replaced with another

This resonance attributed to Schumann
Is a frequency that is also human

(C) 2013 Shawn White Eagle

My five fingers meet
Your five fingers become
Our ten fingers joined
Together as hands’ kiss*
 
 As they turned into the lane he said to her, ‘May I hold your hand?’ Giving him one of her brightest smiles she said, ‘Of course.’ So he did, slipping his fingers between hers and thinking immediately how their hands fitted so exactly, because at first they hadn’t. There was this physical unmatchedness, a tension that prevented their fingers achieving that delicious kiss that held hands can achieve. How often at this moment, when that ‘kiss’ took place, had he thought of their first such ‘kiss’? And particularly here, under the same hills where it had happened three years past.
 
It was late: they had come to his studio after supper and sat together on the sensible sofa under a single standard lamp. There had been music: the A minor Quartet of Robert Schumann, a work full of love for his Clara. Stretching out she had lain calmly, her legged limbs resting across his thighs,, her feet on the sofa’s arm, and all with that graceful attitude with which he had now become familiar. But then . . . a little claustrophobic, he moved to sit by his table and into the semi-darkness outside the lamp’s thrown light, his heart too heavy with that cocktail love and passion blends. As the music came to an end he had gone to kneel beside her, seeking a kiss with the lips: she had refused. Yet she kissed him with her eyes and the opening and closing of her lips as they talked.
 
Later, when they began to walk home to the guesthouse, it had been so dark outside that he could not actually see her, only sense her presence close by. So he had found her hand, and with that the moment arrived, when, under a veil of practicality, he had become joined to her and she to him. It was enough: more than he could ever have hoped it would be.
 
Now, walking up this narrow lane as the day cleared grey skies into evening’s clarity, and after only a few steps, he drew her close and into a passionate kiss. He held her: to feel the whole length and shape of her body, pressing himself to her in love’s abandon – and, and, and she was embarrassed that he should so suddenly do this, that he should declare himself in this way. Realising this, he immediately kissed her again as if to say ‘Don’t you understand?’ trying, trying, trying not to say ‘I love you so’, attempting to put all his words into a single kiss. But she was elsewhere . . . and so his passion fell away. He wanted to look at her, again, again, again, drink deep draughts of her beauty, the delicacy of her mouth, her hair’s fine confusion, the dear fall of her ******* under the dress he loved (and when he had first seen her wear it he had experienced an extraordinary desire – as it seemed to speak to him of the curves and secret places he had come to know, had come to touch.).
 
But, as she needed to be elsewhere, he didn’t look at her again. He released his hand from hers and, stopping at a gate that led onto a field of recently cut grass, looked beyond the field to the tableau of the hills that drew the eyes upward to the clouds, clouds no longer opaque but blotched with a faint blueness and the slight pink refraction of a now day-distant sun.
 
Was there a time, he wondered as he stood leaning on the gate, when lovers stopped holding each other’s hands? Perhaps, as age and familiarity grew ever onwards, it was only in the occasional passion of the bedroom that fingers might lace into fingers. He remembered one such occasion, feeling faint as the sensuous images flashed past him. Her hand lay on the pillow, cast behind her head up turned, at rest, fingers curled slightly as one occasionally sees in a Rodin sculpture. He had placed his hand on her forearm and moving towards her wrist brought the pads of his fingertips into her hand’s palm. He remembered feeling those destiny lines etched into her palm’s surface. He had let his index and middle fingers travel her life’s journeys. Then, then, then he had moved closer and pressed his hand closer, closer to her fingertips, towards the smooth pads of her fingers . . . until they met. There were no words, only shallow breathing, her sweet breath, the tickle of her hair on his nose, the press and press of their fingers.
 
And all this was when they had sought each other in the spell of a late afternoon in winter, had interrupted all business and the day’s completion of lists to be in each other’s arms, to press their hands together, to experiment with passions’ chemistry.
 
Such times he treasured still, and, as they walked back to their cottage, he put these thought-gifts away in the plain sandalwood box he kept on a shelf in her room, a room he had furnished for her in the only home he had – his mind’s imagination.

Eres mi amor, Paula, mi amor, Paula, Clara quise decir.
Y cuánto tiempo, Paula, digo Clara,
sin ti y sin mí. Las diligencias
parten sin mí y sin ti.
O a ti te llevan hacia el norte, hacia el pobre Roberto.
A mí, hacia el sur, contigo hacia el sur, donde ya no estabas,
donde nunca estarías. Ahora he tomado el tren
para decirte adiós. Y sueño, sueño mío.

Cerré los ojos, deslumbrado por la memoria.
Apreté la cintura del paisaje, recorrí sus caderas,
miré sus ojos verdes, ceniza con sentido.
Tendía el cielo su metal hermético.
Y se superpusieron mediterráneos y cantábricos,
cipreses respirados desde un sótano,
casi a vista de muerto, y jazmineros.
Después, las cosas y sus nombres
perdieron sus contornos, su significación
y fueron nada más que ritmo, armonía viajera
liberada de los instrumentos que le dieron su carne.
No queda nadie ya que pueda perdonarte,
que pueda perdonarme, perdonarnos.
Nadie que pueda rescatar los besos que se pudren
sobre Roberto y su locura piadosa.
Ahora que voy a ti, a encontrarte en la aduana de la muerte
pienso, Clara, amor mío, que cuando nos besábamos
era a Roberto a quien besábamos, al engañado
hijo de nuestro amor. Él murió un día.
Su esposa, tú, amor mío, Clara, también has muerto ahora.
Yo tomé el tren para encontrarme en la frontera,
para decirte adiós desde el lado acá de la muerte, amor de mi vida.

Pero nunca llegaré a ti.
El viejo Brahms es viejo, y está gordo.
Me he quedado dormido y me he pasado de estación.
¿Comprendes, amor mío, que nunca llegaré a tu lado
por culpa de este sueño, que es mi bálsamo y mi enemigo?
Ya nunca llegaré a tu lado.
Puede ser, amor mío, que no te amara ya,
que no te hubiese amado nunca,
que sólo hubiese amado a mi propio amor,
el amor que te tuve, Clara, amor mío.

A mirror will suffice, no doubt.
The high furrowed forehead,
The heavy-lidded Asian eyes,
The long-lobed Indian ears.
Brown skin beginning to spot,
Of an age to bore and be bored.
I turn away, knowing too well
My face, my expression
For all seasons, my half-smile.

Birds flit about the feeder,
The dog days wane, and I
Observe the jitters of leaves
And the pallor of the ice-blue beyond.
I read to find inspiration. I write
To restore candor to the mind.
There are raindrops on the window,
And a peregrine wind gusts on the grass.
I think of my old red flannel shirt,
The one I threw away in July.
I would like to pat the warm belly of a
Beagle or the hand of a handsome woman.
I look ahead to cheese and wine,
And a bit of Bach, perhaps,
Or Schumann on the bow of Yo-Yo Ma.

I see the mountains as I saw them
When my heart was young.
But were they not a deeper blue,
shimmering under the fluency of skies
Radiant with crystal light? Across the way
The yellow land lies out, and standing stones
Form distant islands in the field of time.
here is a stillness on this perfect world,
And I am content to settle in its hold.
I turn inward on a wall of books.
They are old friends, even those that
Have dislodged my dreams. One by one
They have shaped the thing I am.

These are the days that swarm
Into the shadows of legend. I ponder.
And when the image on the glass
Is refracted into the prisms of the past
I shall remember: my parents speaking
Quietly in a warm familiar room, and
I bend to redeem an errant, broken doll.
My little daughter, her eyes brimming
With love, beholds the ember of my soul.
There is the rattle of a teacup, and
At the window and among the vines,
The whir of a hummingbird’s wings.
In the blue evening, in another room,
There is the faint laughter of ghosts,
And in a tarnished silver frame, the
likeness of a boy who bears my name.

Passion--   a lesser word would blemish
The glory of an autumnal afternoon
The melancholy of Schumann drifted through the music room
It made the heart weep and swoon

And life's poignancy never seemed more real
Than every celestial note from the master's quintet
That which is beyond the limits of words
Is the soul of music: this , this was a moment in time I would not forget.

THROUGH MY EYES:        
BRAHMS’ S UNTITLED POEM  (1857) *
        
Women I love with my heart and soul
But I am not made for matrimony
A domestic life  and its trappings
Would destroy my creativity.    

Clara I would protect and worship
With my life—she is perfection-
Love I would blemish and defile
If I were to mention—‘Give me your affection’.

Ah, my beloved Robert is gone
In his tomb my heart is interned
My mentor, my friend, my inspiration  
Alas, how little I gave my master in return.

My music is Robert and Clara
Our souls are by destiny wrought
History shall remember
But would understand us not.



         * Robert Schumann (1810—1856)

        * Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

        * Clara Schumann    (1819—1896)

Overhead, the moon has spilled her pearl necklace onto the sky
A night's snowfall frozen in time.
She smells of aged lily of the valley perfume
that she saves for special occasions.

Around her, the sky is whispering Schumann,
Mondnacht, I think.
His celestial voice sails between constellations like a cloud
And the stars give one last wink.

Yochana-
my bird thin,
dark haired,

Schubert loving,
once kissed
now shy, girl;

see how time
has sped
by us both.

How many stars
have burnt out
in that time and space?  

I dreamed of you
at one time,
tucked you away

in my dreams box,
placed you
at the bottom

of my mind's depth.
A photo of the old school
reminded me of you,

the background,
the playing field,
the other kids older

like you and me,
just before
the Beatles' first LP.

Yochana-
with whom
did you share your life?

Who touched your body?
Shared your lips,
sat with you

at the Schubert recitals?
I remember you
in front in class,

your head to one side
as the teacher played
that Schubert piece,

your thin frame,
narrow waist,
you titless,

Reynard said,
of you, he spoke.
I saw how

your hands moved
to the music's flow,
the fragile fingers

mock playing
on the desktop.
Reynard considered

the colour
of your underwear,
I studied you,

your far away,
music tranced stare.
Yochana-

where are you now?
In whose bed
did you lay?

Whose arms
embraced you?
Who fingers searched

you out and on?  
I recall
your bird-thin frame,

wiry arms,
the dark hair
the length

of your back;
how the Schumann piece
had you spaced out

in dream mode,
your eyes closed,
and I –

Benny,
watching you,
you,

unaware of me,
giving you
the desiring stare.

SEA IMAGES

This rusty little boat, anchored on the far-away shallow bank,
Neglected, but still bears marks of past bruises and secrets
Of passion, known only to some daring lovers
Long forgotten.

Today the sky is still red with summer desire,
The winds blow free and wild, careless, enticing.
Crimson flowers, half-hidden from human eyes,
Resplendent in glory, flushed with fire,
Drunk with yearning, dream of a world beyond time
Devoid of regrets, pains and sighs.

This day seems so long, while the heat waves tear
At the insatiate hearts of all, both young and old,
Who share the common anguish, the same bond of longing
For what could never be, that unfathomable-
Beyond words, experience, touch, feeling-
that magnificent unknown
Born of first love.
Is that what is inadequately
Spoken of by the poets as ecstasy?

Like the themes of an eternal symphony, the sea
Holds the keys to the heart’s depth,
Its longing, loneliness, sorrow and pain
While the last song of this summer has come to an end, sadly,
There will always be a boat somewhere with its story-
Watched by the waves, the sky, the crimson flowers
And love unfulfilled, soaked in silent misery.

After listening to Schumann and Chopin’s piano concertos-
night of 14th August 1999, Sydney

James Sebastian Middlemarch was a prodigy.
No other way to say it in truth,
And those who knew him and his gift
Were in agreement that he was destined to reach
The apogee of the musical world,
Though he, even at a very young age, discouraged such talk,
Sometimes offhandedly, but at other times
Quite insistently indeed, for, even then,
He had the constant, gnawing suspicion
That there was a disconnect between the harmonies
(Mad, excruciating, yet unspeakably lovely)
Which scampered unfettered around his head
And those he could bring forth on the piano or viola.  
Nonetheless, his aptitude pulled him along
Through longitude and latitude,
To Julliard, then Paris and Vienn, maixing with others
Marked by their provincial peers as The Next One.  

Through all this time,
The sonatas, concertos, and full-blown symphonies
Danced on in his mind without restraint or retreat
Yet, when he tried to corral them onto paper,
They kicked and bucked and spit out the bit
In spurious sixteenths and turgid quarters
Which cantered along in pedestrian time signatures.  
These pieces (the “sad imitations”, as he called them)
Were performed on more than the odd occasion,
But on smaller stages by undistinguished orchestras,
And those freelancers dispatched by features editors
In the Rochesters and Pensacolas of the world
(Small-timers themselves, yet wholly without sympathy)
Would cluck and sigh dismissively in their reviews
That the works were derivative,
With easily discernible bits of Strauss and Schumann
(Clara Schumann, according to one acerbic small-town wit)
Scattered here and there,
And they were unanimous in their belief and opinion
As to the minor nature of his presence on the musical landscape.

After some years, he stopped publishing his works
Which made him even less of an afterthought
Than he had been at his low-slung zenith.  
He continued to play with some regional symphonies,
Where he was deeply loved by his colleagues,
As he was modest in the face of praise,
But never sparing in dispensing kindness in return,
And to all appearances the frenzied siren airs
Which had ridden roughshod over his psyche for so many decades
Had ceased at last, but after his death, one of his sons discovered,
Squatting surreptitiously under a mound of ancient antimacassars,
Several trunks containing untold scores of sheet music,
(Updated versions of earlier work,
New pieces abandoned in exasperation)
Which sat in mute testament to the difficult labor
Of unfastening onself from the yoke of being ordinary.

the dread i feel
from valiant effort
to a broken railroad.
an endless love
sent down the stream.
it sails.
i watch from the peer
but pretend not to see.

i feel schumann in
the mirror.
we let the same notes
push us off the cliff.