HIGH FIDELITY

If I could, Odysseus or Faust-like,

Converse with one of the towering dead,

I would summon George Frideric Handel

Who chose perfection of the work - His

life, ordinary, except for trips

On the Continent by carriage

To recruit castrati to trill

In his operas, trips to Bath

For the fashionable cures, trips

To Hanover to console his mother.

A friend of Pope, he had no ear

For English, even sweet Italian

Was clotted with his gutturals.

He composed alone, a bachelor

Wedded to music, mostly famous

In London—there, An Institution.

He did see the Great God Himself once

While he penned The Hallelujah;

The Great King George Himself

Stood up at the performance.

Shades

Of the Past, conduct him hither

Through System II of my new stereo.

GOLDEN AGE

What's an old man like you doing

In The Garden of Love, Venus, Adonis

Dallying, nymphs and swains in postures

Of amor, dripping rivulets and reeds.

Alessandro Scarlatti, you can't fool me

With your classical allusions -- I know,

At the beginning of my own old age,

That your neighbor's daughter inspired

Your serenata, her plump breasts,

Because, when I first heard the lift

Of this music -- trumpets, two sopranos,

Strings -- it was like meeting (what in

the) another st-stunning young face.

THE FINAL NOTE

Somebody do something. Schubert's

Hair is falling out, drifting down

Onto the piano keys while he composes

His Opus Posthumous B Flat Sonata. He

Doesn't seem to notice, so intent he

Is on grand romantic gestures, six

Hundred songs behind him, nine

Symphonies, umpteen numbers of happy

Piano and somber chamber works, each

Satisfactory to him for maybe a day, each

A beginning, an art not thought of

But grown like leaves, like this last sonata

To which he affixes the last dead

Note, dum, and falls from the piano stool

At thirty-one in 1828. At your age,

Tom said, Schubert was already dead.

A PUCCINI ARIA

Keyed up and jangling at the edge, after

Composing the long love duet for Butterfly,

That afternoon, after a lunch of green figs

(You were dieting}—rich and famous, you

Went for a spin in your new Stutz Bearcat

Racing car to cool off and simmer down.

Too fast on a curve, you swerved to miss a tree

And ditched, upside down, pinned beneath

The hood, your leg broken, your scalp bleeding.

Nearly asphyxiated by the fumes of gasoline,

What were your thoughts: Marcello's "Corragio,"

The Shepherd's serene song at the end of Tosca, or

(You once declared that you were always in love)

Girls' names unfolding like an aria: Susanna,

Francesca, Sofia, Concetta, Maria, Lucia,

Teresa, Bianca, Elena, Luisa, Luisa …

CODA

The buck Ensigns at the Great Lakes BOQ

Despised what they called fairy music, but,

On midnight watch, when the switchboard

I plugged was silent —the drunks all in—

In the rec room I played barely worn 78s of

Your Second Piano Concerto and found, ah,

My mind was a vast auditorium and could hold

All the chairs of a philharmonic orchestra.

I have read your biographies; all agree —

Your great belly packed with knockwurst

And rotkraut und brot und lager und torte—

You returned from your usual Weinstube

To your ramshackle bachelor rooms to play

With toy soldiers on a field of baize

(A converted billiards table) —war games

Inspired your only opera, so bloody

And Prussian you could not find the notes

For rage: cannon boom, generals fall

Over, men fall over, horses break in two;

Unperturbed, that swabby over there

By the eight ball, listening to the phono,

Is thrilled to carry a spear in this opera

Conceived but not written by you, Johannes Brahms.