but I had to go back to the cutting room floor I rasped sawed inhaled decay slipped on innards
donated the root of an angel's wing to a famished rat with a critic's evacuated eyes
but then the Opéra!
it was like moving from rowing boats in the park
to the decks of majestic three-masters riding all the distant inner oceans
suddenly it was music to the power of itself
it was cosmic imagining & writing
unimaginable numbers
2
forcing the hacksaw through a stranger's cranium the next day I hummed a tune conducting with my eyebrows
the kindly gifts of destiny
I practically ran back to the opera & was chromatically damaged by a cor anglais crying the hymn that floated that very first communion
then I found the Conservatoire library was open to the public
the manuscripts of Gluck treasure like Shakespeare's notes
once my eyes & ears had played Gluck all pretence of medicine was rinsed down the sink
& I held up the triumphant hand of an artist
alone like Lear in the quiet & failing light
3
when convinced I wouldn't give up writing in the name of all that's holy my Catholic mother cursed me
back in Paris I survived on private lessons prune & raison sandwiches & an inexhaustable wealth of tone & light flowing into poetry & water
I lost weight & composed myself with luxurious orchestrations desperate pulses rippling in & out spreading upstream & downriver
don't confuse art with camouflaging yourself in landscape
that happens later up the crem down the pit
4
below a certain temperature there can be no reaction
one night as I conducted clouds
the sky kicked & split earthing through me
making me brilliant & dumb with shock
Harriet Smithson was Ophelia then Juliet
was Shakespeare writing much of my future
she singed & sang my surfaces stewed my innerness
every molecule touched by irreversible change
sleep escaped from strange nocturnal presence
tracking me across the room & world
another chorus of feelings
5
I trod the Paris streets like time
& through all that madness I can count the bouts of sleep
on the fingers of her left hand
collapsed in a dark field of corn on the edge of the city
worn out in any meadow under autumn sun
burrowed in snow banked up on the banks of the Seine
with my head on the table between my own knife & fork in the Café du Cardinal
not reassuring the waiters
6
& that sudden multiplication of dark matter within transformed for ever the gravities & orbits of my life I wrote back to Shakespeare & I wrote back to her the configuration of my inner river & the devastated landscape of my floating heart after the flood
leave it out on Tuesdays
7
the whole world
the empty bed
your absent river
8
I practically dragged Lesueur to Beethoven's 5th
he was so scared of giving an opinion
Christ he was so moved & disconcerted that at the end he went to put his hat on & couldn't find his head
9
worshipping Harriet from afar I didn't notice Camille breathing next to me teaching piano piano as I taught guitar to shadows
