An Anthem For Orpheus

Some animals were gathered in a ring
around a rhapsode playing with a song.
He sighed and plucked a solitary string,
“It’s music. What could possibly go wrong?”

The lion lying there, beside the lamb,
drifted off to sleep in the tall grass;
brooks trickled in, and so did boulders, and
the audience stood up, as if at Mass.

He handled his equipment with such skill,
he held a brief monopoly on sound.
He plucked another string, another—til
a mushroom cloud erupted over town.

Some say this was the first experiment
to mix religion, politics and art.
The town was made of music, not cement.
Construction in cement had yet to start.

A Preview

Not much to offer today in the way of completed stanzas for "Takaaki," but I did clear a major technical hurdle tonight. The two final stanzas of the sequence are presently writing themselves in my imagination. Here is a taste of what's to come in section IV.

...Perhaps it is unethical to build

A boyfriend from plutonium. But still

It can be done. I did it. Here’s the proof...

I will show you how I did it in the next few days. Stay tuned!

A Practical Banana Promotion

Yesterday's post about Orpheus left me feeling rather miserable last night, and after my 900 calorie cardio session at the gym, I collapsed in a heap in one corner of the 8:07 on my way home. My boyfriend, Yasu, was in Hiroshima last week visiting the Peace Memorial, as a part of his dissertation research, and I think that's how that particular thread of thinking unravelled into a poem.

I am not sure if you noticed in the poem, but Orpheus plucks his lyre 3 times, which is an extremely oblique reference, I think, to the Trinity test site, New Mexico, where the first atomic test was conducted in July of 1945. I don't believe that was the test where they built a small town to observe the effects of the bomb on cities. Evidently, I am conflating those two events. No wonder I had such a headache last night. But I was recovered enough this morning to make a few changes to Orpheus.

Now, what does all of this have to do with bananas? Besides the (generally--though by no means universally) well recognized insanity of nuclear war? Well, I will tell you.

...

As I slumped in my seat in the train, I somehow found the energy to scroll around the selection wheel on my iPod, flpping by: The Clash, Elgar's Cello Concerto, Gorecki's 3rd Symphony, Kindertotenleider, I ran across Anna Russell's exegesis on the fine art of selling bananas: A Practical Banana Promotion, and I started silently to smile. Did you know that your typical banana has 88 calories--the same number of keys as your typical grand piano?

It's true. It's one of those odd numerical coincidences—like the number of plays by Shakespeare equalling the number of more or less complete extant Greek tragedies (37). Or cheetahs and chairs each having four legs. I'm not making this up you know.

Well, as my smile started to broaden a bit, and various jingles for encouraging the consumption of bananas were proposed by Mrs. Russell, and the obvious associated dangers, I recalled a poem I had written for a writing seminar a few years ago--a sort of loose, vanitas piece--making fun of my weakness for bleakness.

Still Life


You know that big bunch—
those long, green bananas
I bought for my Wheaties—
just sat there on my cracked
countertop for days—

uneaten—yellowing—
not seeming to mind
being left alone: until

I went to peel one—and
then all of them
suddenly turned black.

I must do a better job eating my fruit, I thought. Not only is it good for the bowels, it is an egregious waste of money to let it sit around and rot. Besides, I have no desire to wind up my days wearing white flannel trousers, running my tongue along my dentures, wondering if I dare to eat peaches, or not. Do you?

Yasu returns from Japan on Sunday. And I move in with him in Queens. And we are going to spend the whole month eating bananas, peaches, apples, and other immemorial fruit.

See you tomorrow!

Orpheus

As a poet, I have often wondered what it must have been like to be Orpheus, the great Greek granddaddy of rhapsodes, bards, and beatniks everywhere. I wonder what kind of a person he was like? Was he as amorous as Ovid, for instance, or more of a family man like Nabokov? Did he dress up and get drunk, like Dylan Thomas, for Halloween? When I picture Orpheus, for some reason, I can never get the picture of Harpo Marx out of my head. To each his own, I guess.

Although anybody beating on a pickle drum in Union Square Station could induce a few felicitous souls already on drugs or disposed toward motion to dance, it takes something extra special, I think, a little bit of latent madness, or maybe malice, to coax a Megalith to move, or a cliff to clap. I have a feeling Orpheus was such a man. I wonder if he and I would have been friends?

An Anthem for Orpheus


Some animals were gathered in a ring
Around a poet, playing with a song;
He sighed and plucked a solitary string,
“It’s music. What could possibly go wrong?”

The lion lying there, beside the lamb,
Drifted off to sleep in the tall grass;
Brooks trickled in, and so did boulders, and
Humanity stood up, as if at Mass.

He handled his equipment with such skill
He held a brief monopoly on sound.
He plucked another string, and then another—til
A mushroom cloud erupted over town.

Some say this was the first experiment
Mixing religion, politics and art.
The town was made of music, not cement:
Construction in cement had yet to start.