for Elisabeth Bishop
Bix to Buxtehude to Boulez.
The little white dog on the Victor label
Listens long and hard as he is able.
It’ s all in a day’ s work, whatever plays.
From judgment, it would seem, he has refrained.
He even listens earnestly to Bloch,
Then builds a church upon our acid rock.
He’ s man’ s — no — he’ s the Leiermann’ s best friend,
Or would be if hearing and listening were the same.
Does he hear? I fancy he rather smells
Those lemon-gold arpeggios in Ravel’ s
“Les jets d’ eau du palais de ceux qui s’ aiment.”
He ponders the Schumann Concerto’ s tall willow hit
By lightning, and stays put. When he surmises
Through one of Bach’ s eternal boxwood mazes
The oboe pungent as a bitch in heat,
Or when the calypso decants its raw bay rum
Or the moon in Wozzeck reddens ripe for murder,
He doesn’ t sneeze or howl; just listens harder.
Adamant needles bear down on him from
Whirling of outer space, too black, too near —
But he was taught as a puppy not to flinch,
Much less to imitate his bête noire Blanche
Who barked, fat foolish creature, at King Lear.
Still others fought in the road’ s filth over Jezebel,
Slavered on hearths of horned and pelted barons.
His forebears lacked, to say the least, forbearance.
Can nature change in him? Nothing’ s impossible.
The last chord fades. The night is cold and fine.
His master’ s voice rasps through the grooves’ bare groves.
Obediently, in silence like the grave’ s
He sleeps there on the still-warm gramophone
Only to dream he is at the première of a Handel
Opera long thought lost — Il Cane Minore.
Its allegorical subject is his story!
A little dog revolving round a spindle
Gives rise to harmonies beyond belief,
A cast of stars... Is there in Victor’ s heart
No honey for the vanquished? Art is art.
The life it asks of us is a dog’ s life.