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The Rogue Swans That Like Classical Music Cosmic Law Lilith When All the Doors of the World Are Shut Because He Didn't Ask For Directions Juggler The Great Smoked Whitefish Leaf and Tree The Man Who Said No Vision The Mephisto Waltz Notes

The Rogue Swans That Like Classical Music    Audio  for  NPR performance

They flew onto the woman's lawn, ten, twenty, forty. . . , grabbed their spots    on the grassy embankment even as the last movement of Beethoven's Ninth -- Freude, schöner Götterfunken . . . blaring from the speakers-- started to lift off.  Transfixed, something in their avian brains had caught:  not the words themselves, but the spell, "Joy, bright spark of divinity . . ." This is the mute swan, Cygnus olor, with roots, old world Eurasian, under attack now by environmentalists, who complain how it over- consumes, pollutes, proliferates.   They've had their eggs shaken to scramble embryos.  Wings pinioned.  Guns aimed at . . . And though they may look immaculate in form, a feathery white to bring snow to summer, they are not (is this not the swan that ravished poor Leda?) pure as all that downy show.  And yet having gathered now, as if by right, as if patrician and with season tickets, they are like the ethereal rush of this music, ageless, in the morning light, the old world rising, its great wing beats.

mute swan

Cosmic Law                          Audio

Then we meet, not at a singles bar, but one for salads:  Roy Rogers'. She's cute, sassy, has a smile like a pixie.  So much for cosmic law, I chortle, preparing a modus operandi for the seduction of toothsome fillies. I, being highbrow and concomitantly romantic, court her at the race track. Alas, in the Fifth Dork's Peter and Su The Master are nipped at the wire.  I feel apoplectic, tremble that the thirteen bills she's just lost, a bad number at that, on top of the difference in age, which is even greater, will no doubt scratch us from some higher card. In the parking lot, I gamble -- nothing ventured, nothing . . . -- with a kiss, come away like a leprechaun,                              heels clicking. At the Hunan Palace   the next week, a different plaint: religion.  Will she want me when she knows? I slip it out like a secret missive between egg rolls and the very unkosher moo shi pork. Under the table,   her high heel shoe slides off and on my right calf I feel a toe. The flush on her cheek's like the sunrise everyone should see, even at 6 A.M.  Today, I go to the library, read about:  the Egyptian pyramids; Hanging Gardens of Babylon; Statue of Zeus; Colossus of Rhodes; Temple of Artemis; Mausoleum at Halicarnassus; Lighthouse at Alexandria, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

At the Racetrack

Lilith             Audio                           Face flushed, breasts heaving, she flaps her wings through the moonlit casement into a man's flat millennia after that first rejection.  Darkness' avatar flashing jewels like stars!  How many fools have kissed her on such visits?  First female, tangled in bedsheets before there was such a thing.  Eve was still an unsuspecting rib when this nubile princess could have become mother of us all, had Adam wrapped around her pinky, save for an act before its time.  Now she travels with a crowd who don't begrudge her the top -- Samael, Qaftzefoni, Ashmodai.  But it's mortals she's driven to ride to gates that guard the dragon, and then, inside.

Lilith by John Collier

When All The Doors Of The World Are Shut                 Audio

Into the turning lane, past the beggar with a scrawled sign "lost my wife and job," up the ramp to the mall, where he parks the car, leaves his key--closing the door--in the ignition behind.  O my God!  He calls AAA.  No answer:  "What the hell are they doing there?  He hails a cab home.  Alas, when he arrives,          the Condo Office has just closed, no chance to get their backup key (his home key is on the chain in the car) to open his apartment where lying in a drawer is a second car key.  But wait! If he hails a cab to take him to work, there's a key to his apartment there . . .  And then doing just that, he remembers he doesn't have his work ID, or the key to the door of his office, feels in that instant what it must be like, the un- raveling, when all the doors of the world are shut.  Soon, though, he will persuade security to help him get the key that gets the key that gets the key . . . And oh, the bliss of finally driving his car out of the mall-- there's the beggar, still out in the heat; he'll  stare past him--onto the main drag, step on the gas and forget.

Beggar with a Sign

                    Because He Didn't Ask For Directions                 Audio     

He was lost and found a yellow warbler on the wrong path, saw a caterpillar that wriggled through the grass not knowing what one day it would be, wind blowing in his face hard.  He was lost and missed the ferry at the time planned, criss-crossed Oak Bluffs on Martha's Vineyard, sat down in a café beside the woman with pouf hair and an expansive look . . . He said something light in the time it took to quaff a beer.  And she'd retell it that night, but with her own inimit- able slant, from which it took on a strange life . . . He didn't ask direction, somehow found his way back to the dock and the ferry, while from out of the cloak of the words he'd spoken, it was as if a magus' rabbit had darted off, became a sea gull rising, soaring . . . Because he was a man without mooring, he stumbled upon the tiny girl on the deck (as the boat in a swirl of motion headed back for Wood's Hole), her face lit with a mischievous smile (a potato chip held as lure over the side), transfiguring to rapture when a gull swooped down, half in play,      half in hunger, carried them both away.

the seagull

                       Juggler                                                          Audio           

He is a juggler.  Up into the air‑‑
one ball, two balls, three.  The entire show
is spinning through his hands.  He does not know
how long to play the game.  He does not care.
He plays it day and night, and with a prayer
he keeps it going even though the snow
has started falling softly, even though
the bombs are falling.  There is no despair.
He is a juggler.  One ball, two balls, three.
And as he tosses, nations rise and fall.
Under a Torquemada men may bend
or break.  Then in a flash they're standing free
and tall.  For centuries, he's seen it all.
He juggles balls.  He'll be here in the end.

The Great Smoked Whitefish                      Audio

On the trail, eyes growing wide
with some gustatory memory
from years ago, smacking his lips,
kissing his fingers; he'd been wasting away --
the cancer; no appetite --
though he blamed his daughter-in-law. 
Her meatballs were hard,
the chicken dry.  Was she trying
to kill him? he'd asked. 
But once out of the wheelchair

into the car, he forgot her, forgot
his dream, too, of the starving birds
and cats--odd, because he owned none.
"Innocent pets," he'd said, "it was sad,
and then . . ." voice exuberant:
"Someone new took them in who loved
and fed them. Oh how happy they became;
they kissed the hands of the owners
who fed them."  Sunroof open, he relaxed
as we drove.  And soon we'd taken off,

air streaming, the Hebrew music in the car --
Hevenu Shalom . . . , Hava Nagila,
Zemer, Zemer, Lach, and many more.
He exclaimed, louder each time,
"hey, Hey, HEy," clapped too, heart
leaping with the beat of the song. 
How far, it seemed, from a week before--
or was it later?--when he'd said, "Inevitable
is a word that's strong; I don't think
I'll last . . ."  His voice had quavered.  I cut

it off in myself, not wanting to hear.
The leaves, crimson, orange, gold; we tried
Stop And Shop in Cromwell, Middletown . . .
No luck.  With a wave of the hand, he urged us
on.   The trees flared at the bottom
of the hill!  And then upward, the day growing
thin.  Quicksilver.  Darting with colors
as we reached higher.  At Waldbaum's, a catch:
huge.  Filling the car with the glitter of scales.
"Inevitable . . . ."  From out of the depths

to this heartland:  smoked flesh, mythic. 
He explained, "you cut off the head first,
then the tail," his hand in short, abrupt slices. 
Filling the day!  In the wind, leaves; dazzle
of memories; light. Trembling.  Like an aspic.
Soft.  Unexpected.  And beyond the shell of his body--
shriveled, crippled--he grasped the fish.  Raced
with it up the stoop to brothers sisters Father
Mother arms open wide, welcoming.  Soon
they would feast as with something holy.

At what point does a leaf see its green start to fade? At what point does the sun seem less pure? The air more compelling? The mottled edge of brown start to fray the edges? Although the others see the same to differing degrees, It's still a lonely thing. They speak in hushed whispers of the time growing short, Of the cold getting worse. Even late in the change away from summer, The sun may be just right, the air so fine, They forget, Almost. At what point does a leaf see itself going faster? Turn to neighbors who smile sympathies, But then turn away as if to ignore unpleasantries? At what point does the leaf confront the tree About the inequities involved? Before the long Fall.

Autumn Colors

       The Man Who Said No         Audio

  -- for Yihya Avraham who kept his vow

 For forty four years he said:  "No."
The paper describes how he died
in an Israeli prison,
a cerebral hemorrhage.  His wife's plea,

"let me go," consent needed
for a religious divorce:
had it been love that drove him?
Or family?--
he had two daughters.
He was  called, threatened, cajoled.  Later,

they passed a law that could put him
in prison.  Still he said:  "No."
They enforced the law.  The sun waxed hot
and cold; he rarely saw it;
friends died; years passed.  Always
the same offer:  we'll let you out if . . .
Somehow he resisted.  He seemed no longer

human.  His wife howled:  "From jail,
he should only go to his grave."
He filled with bile:
Some things should be freely given,
not this charade of law. Suspicious,   

afraid to affix his name to anything.
"It's a trick," he thought, shaking his head
when they came with a piece of paper
for him to sign.  It was for a canteen allowance.
Sign if you want a doctor:  No.
Sign if you want visitor's privileges:  No.
His eyes went wild. There was no trick;

some papers you have to sign.
He refused to die, hung on . . .
How could they do this to anyone?
At the end in a dream they called him
senile.  Under the chupa there,
stepping on the glass he knew was his life.
Shattered.  A woman before him,
dressed in white like an angel.
She was death.  And his.  And beautiful.     

       
                     Vision                   Audio

A welter of color inside -- diuretics,
tranquilizers, tetracycline -- the chassid's

pillbox seems made for a child to play with.
The capsules, like marbles to roll, candies

to suck.  He also uses insulin, buys it
in bulk with a gross of needles.  All this

to survive the body's storms -- rain slashing
like knives, snow swirling in hyperborean blasts.

He'd will an end, were there a passing through
for sure, some delectable houri, waiting

even for a Jew.  Shalom! she'd say, eternally ready
with the hips.  When his virtue slips, he studies

Torah, Talmud.  Judah Ben Tema, Abtalyon, Hillel
are friends.  So is lithium.  He seeds the clouds

with it.  His libido rises, and the Baal Shem Tov,
guru from an age of werewolves, warlocks dances

once again in the Carpathian Mountains, drawing >
souls together.  Likut nitzotzot:  the in-gathering

of dispersed sparks.  Come!  He beckons from
across centuries, the pockets of his black vesture

filled with holy miracles.  Then, like a presti-
digitator, he's gone.  In a test-hospital, aka/gehenna

the man with the pillbox screeches.  Figures
in white float by him with words, potions, needles.

His eyes shut defensively, right arm, left
poked, prodded.  Elusive are the arteries to God.

           The Mephisto Waltz                            Audio

 Around the grave, black is the color.

The earth flies back, coffin creaks open.  

Bones, decaying flesh totter out.

Praise God!  his wife cries out, falls

into his arms.  Adult children stand

beside them.  Congratulations, everyone says.

Retirement's not the thing.  He takes up

lawyering, wins a big case; but his salary

drops.  The kids have schoolwork problems.

Nothing to worry about, just like their ole Dad,

he hoops and hollers, chases Mom,

mesmerized by her indecently worn negligee.

The children dematerialize.  He doesn't

miss them.  At the wedding, his wife

is dressed in cotillion white.  Solemn vows

punctuate his movement into bachelorhood.

Egad!  Acne!  A period of priapic concern,

loneliness, study.  His comets are dreams. 

He'd become a poet, grows smaller, half‑heartedly

roughhouses with his brother‑‑a little thug

not interested in Shakespeare, Marlowe.

He draws closer to Mother.  Her body's a lure.

One minute he's sucking on a breast, the next

he's spanked.  Finally, he's inside drifting in
amniotic fluid, thinking:  all the world's a stage,
when the world blanks out.  Her friends
console her.  He lived a good life, they say.

                                               Notes