Alan Gould: Five Poems

The American

Dvorak, String Quartet

 

His cello spoke to violin,

    Now tilt me something new

will light me to that vowelled within

    beyond where words construe.

 

His fiddle was a diplomat,

made nuance finely where

aristocrat went slantwise at

the common people’s fare.

 

I’ll nimble you a melody

   where pollen takes the warm

and trout hang in gold lethargy

   below where gnats perform.

 

I’ll spiral you sheer mountain walls

   where snow lifts off like smoke.

I’ll nuance old world rigmaroles

    of dancing gentlefolk.

 

A blue bird filled the canopy,

a green bird sang below.

He could not be in Tennessee

till music made it so.

 

A hillside found its violin,

a cello held its shire

where trees, as green as apple skin,

were taking orange fire.

 

A cirrus prairie overhead,

he walked in Idaho

in some inchoate blessed instead

when music made it so.

 

The charmed musician, dropped his score

to join that further dance

where words dissolve their metaphor

into insouciance.

 

 

 

A Morris Jig

To the tune of Vaughan Williams’s Morris Jig, in his “King Cole Suite”

 

When bees went gloved in petals

and trees were green with medals,

we came upbeat and stately

with click of sticks and curtsey,

 

being Moorish in your English

when the chic of court turned quick

as we danced the roads from London

to the Shires of Workingfolk

 

on holy days from anvil

and holiday from shovel,

wearing Sunday best with ribbons,

goon hats of plaited straw,

 

to lose the dark of workshops,

and steely null of dawns

for this our hour of sunlight

where our tattoo steps might sign

 

the commons of enchantment

to light a spellbound place

where the long face was the merry

and one camped outside one’s face

 

in the carefree of cared footwork

and our clicked geometry

where bees worked in their sweatshops

and the trees wore finery.

 

 

Fantasia for Tuba

After Vaughan Williams’s Tuba Concerto

 

Tuba growl your self possession,

burly drinker give us proof

our merriment is intercession

of quiet word and belly laugh.

 

Tuba amble down our lanes,

make melody from pools and ruts,

recruit us for some green Cockaigne,

with your longwinded ifs-and-buts.

 

For, trumpet major, we’re at ease

if you’ll snore what you think you are

when violins and cellos tease

your solos with their pert hurrah.

 

Yes, take your vowelled baritone

to brilliant tremolos upon

electrons humming in the stone,

the quiet bow-wave of a swan.

 

For John “The Tuba” Falstaff nods

his riotous, endearing head,

affirms the warble of the gods

blows Tuba for its thunderhead.

 

 

 

 

Inis Oirr

(Barry Phillips on cello)

 

Now here’s a cello prises chill

between a collar and a hat

and what we hear is lean and churl,

and where we are has no whereat

 

but islets maybe on dark water

where a ferry butts the spray

and strings of living sway the welter,

that’s burnished with the ores of day,

 

these tussocks brushed like brassy hair

by a wind that grows immense

above the barns and cattle here

where cello rules the present tense

 

for such inchoate sarabands

where dancers in their firelight,

locate the joy in their grave rounds,

the complex code of their delight.

 

This code is ours, yet as remote

from life as is an hour ago,

seizing music’s brilliant mote,

its tender touch and brutal flow.

 

 

 

 

And We Had Hands

To the tune of “Spanish Lady”

 

As I came down through Egomania—

(I wish I could recall the hour)

who should I see but a whisky matron,

stepping deftly from her shower.

Fluffed and orange was her towel,

dishevelled was her silver hair,

and in broad measure she showed pleasure

to find my ego naked there,

 

dangled, brangled, moistly tangled,

—lovely was her powder smell.

She walked her tigers through my jungle

fed them on crème caramel.

 

As I came back through Gaucherie

about the time when I was young,

who should I see but that feisty matron

catching raindrops on her tongue.

She smiled at me, her eyebrow lifted,

clinging were her azure skirts.

Those raindrops she both flicked them, licked them

like they were flirty extroverts.

 

And we had hands that would go handling,

clothes grown see-through round each limb—

such limbs to kick the moon to kindling

in blue lagoons where we would swim.

 

As I came down through Self-regard

and shed the glad wrap of my selves

who should I see but that wrapt lady

calling to heel her timber wolves.

She trusted me to scarve her shoulders,

her creatures snoozed below our bed.

The Milky Way, like appliqué,

was coverlet for our instead

 

where we crooned tunes of rub and sidle,

with clerestories of license there,

illumined toil so sweetly idle

as earthenware felt earthenware.

 

As I came back through mortal coil,

a silver bushfire in my head,

I could not find my whisky matron,

neither our bed of Sweet Instead.

Bright pools of Ego, Gaucherie,

had hid its moonshine on our sea,

and yet that lovely whisky matron

thrilled me with her constancy

 

in reaches of my mind whose idling

flood-and-ebb took fine delight

found timber wolves and tigers sidling,

angels to our real night.

 

Alan Gould