Jeffrey Burghauser: ‘The Pipe Organ Addresses the Virtuoso’ and ‘Lullaby’

The Pipe Organ Addresses the Virtuoso

When you were a girl in Prague
Was your family especially political?
What did people say about the Jews?
Under which abundant pedagogue
(Under which entanglement of barren-boughed
Consonants & diacritical
Squiggles) did you study? And of whose
Commendations do you feel most proud?

Facing down my sounded notes, the cog-
Nátory of taps & clicks, the creaks & clitical
Calls of fulcra, keys & oaken screws
Skitter in autistic dialogue.
Touch’s realness can’t be disavowed.
You’re applying with the critical,
Civilized precision of taboos
Heft as of a springtime-dampened shroud.

When your heart warms my veneers, I know
I’m as old as you are young. Behold these veils of specks
Glazed by later lacquers on my face.
Age has played upon my workings, though
Only relative to the austere
Fact of having been imagined ex-
Préssly for my designated place.
This cannot be said of you, my dear.

“What’s it like to have the use of so …
Notable an instrument?” some wizened windbag checks
From behind his vocal carapace
On behalf of public radio.
You confess by smile coy & sheer
That such stories as are yours to flex
Cannot quite command sufficient grace
To maneuver through discretion’s weir.

Jeffrey Burghauser

Lullaby

Adapted from the Hebrew of Nathan Alterman

The market stalls are all asleep now,
The shadow supple as a thrush;
The sloping alleys sweetly keep now
The silver song the pipers flush.
The clarinets,
They do not weep now.
You hear it? They say: Hush.

The harmless frolics of the day,
And all the presents destined for us!
The dulcet season made us say:
“The sun burns not,
The bees ignore us.”
And angels try
This lullaby
While opal crickets sing the chorus.

The harlequin, the king & pages,
The Gaelic jade & crystal rill,
The trumpet & the pens of sages,
The oleander’s velvet frill—
They are at rest
On curtained stages.
Goodnight, my love. Be still.

Oh, why does springtime have to end?
And why do dewy fronds grow sallow?
And why do rivers seaward wend,
And “innocent”
Re-christened “callow”?
But don’t you cry.
My lullaby
Will make these questions melt like tallow.

Some songs are faithless as an ally,
Or burnished like a Persian dome;
Some songs are shapely as a “Shall I”
Inscribed inside a vellum tome.
But only one
Is a canal I
Can use to get back home.

The crown has tumbled from the king;
The jesters giggle in their pleasure.
The sun has set on everything.
The shepherds blush
In dreamy leisure
Asprawl in my
Mere lullaby.
Goodnight, my love, my love, my treasure.

And that is my
Mere lullaby.
Goodnight, my love, my treasure. Hush.

Jeffrey Burghauser