July 2010, Thirteen Poems Written During Wagner’s “Ring Cycle” in L.A.
I. The Cycle
[M]y intention too obvious would get in the way of genuine
understanding.—Richard Wagner
An experience as intense as I’m ever likely to have,
exposed to everything beautiful and difficult—connected
with all I have longed for including the inevitable disappointment,
over and over, the immersion no mystery at all, knowing through feeling
the vast the intricate, no longer daunted or bewildered,
made brave by the work, understanding the whole,
what’s destroyed and by what crushed, like an abandoned statue
in a flooded quarry, learning how to stand in a universe of water.
II. For Twelve Years No Music at All,
Then the Birth of Continuous Music
and Poetry for Over Fifteen Hours
Ambivalence is always an ingredient in genius.
—Robert Donington Wagner’s “Ring” and Its Symbols
Fish dart between stones that
have been caught in the bend
of dreams I can’t remember.
The glow from the campfire
outlines the individual nettles.
Other than that, I cannot see.
All that is shall come to an end.
Do not fear, do not hurry
but when the time comes, jump.
III. In Service
Wagner’s music dramas have always moved to very strong enthusiasm for most of
those who have not been moved to an equally strong repudiation; and
sometimes the enthusiasm has succeeded to the repudiation, or the other way
around, apparently in accordance with the changing needs of the recipient.
—Robert Donington—Wagner’s “Ring” and Its Symbols
A tale obscurely and slowly told
lends itself to singing, words springing up
to fit the music as if from memory—
the music that begins when we are overcome
and continues until we surrender,
arrives too late to save us.
There are better ways of spending
time than plowing through what’s
already been written
but when I’m stuck,
I return to what paths I’ve
hacked out of other thickets.
This is reasonable and right.
Perhaps there is something to be said for
the best of it, in the music mostly.
Words should be sounded—
the long dark vowel in “blood,” and the “oh”
in Tod whatever it is is certainly not death.
There is a cadence in death
that can be heard and its
“air” charms me.
My heart is contented.
What I’ve said was to keep other voices alive,
what they said translated
by any means possible,
not through theories
but through direct transmission–
the sound and literal sense combined
in words that fit the melody—
sense made audible—what it means
in words spoken in their natural order.
Or reversed, setting music to the written word,
I hope not unmusical unless deliberately so
for it is better to lull by words than alarm—
an immersion in the intellectual process of another–
the voyage I’ve longed for into what I can only imagine,
moving through instinct and intuition through
the landscape of dreams, the future taking shape,
believing it to be true
sitting in this hotel room where every evening
after the Wagner, I return to read and translate
the ideas of others into the cadence of my song.
IV.
But a multiplicity of levels is not taken in all at once, and at least on some of these
levels, an initial repudiation can be encountered which may or may not yield on
further acquaintance, if there is enough compensating attraction to keep the
reader in play. —Robert Donington Wagner’s “Ring” and Its Symbols
I cannot write what I do not know
beyond the dim parallels I can draw
from the works of others.
I dissemble
in my attempt to conceal, to disguise,
half-veiled and half-revealed.
The only connection I have is
every sensation registered
with or without my understanding, as what I
overlooked begins to worm its way back into my
incomprehension, to disturb as well as delight,
drawn along by grammar as old as Plato and as long enduring.
There is always so much I do not understand.
That’s the difficulty of writing, plus to assume
whatever moves me moves others, the strange certainty
it’s all been said before, but this time it’s me–
as if everything is laid out on the bed before me.
I didn’t plan on arriving here but was aimed
and released and it was all forsworn
but with a fleeting intimation
of a deeper purpose
transforming into something
I was not before
but still familiar,
still me but not so deliberate, more intuitive,
as if it was my mistake–
to get this close and then no closer.
V. I Discover My Leitmotif
Her shadow grows by the hour,
the source of my insomnia
this Lorelei.
Tonight we will not sleep. Just this once
could we go to bed without
any of this drama?
But the match has already struck the flint
and we’re both waiting
for it to burn my fingers.
VI. I Discover My Arch-Type
Nothing left to search for, at rest, the end ending
—do not hold on—jump. Why should I worry further?
Everything that has gone before, where is it now?
Life was more or less what I expected
except for the harshness at the end,
which I could not in my youth imagine.
There is much that words cannot express.
Whatever it is it seems to be inexhaustible,
but there must be more to it than that.
Life is both a varnish and a solvent,
dissolving our stories into something
frozen in a book, and at the same time
knowing it will soon be forgotten forever—
merely a bridge between one moment and another,
what I can perhaps make something from.
It’s the same story written by different hands.
Leave it to speak for itself. If anyone knew
the punchline we’d all be laughing.
But the allegory collapses into more pieces
than I can possibly re-assemble
and vanishes with everything else–
and I keep walking
even tho I can barely keep pace.
VII. I Encounter the God of Death
For what I thought was right,
others reckoned was wrong,
and what seemed to me bad,
others held to be good.
–Siegmund, The Valkyrie
The God of Death is in the nothing between us.
His is a fierce and primitive true for all time.
Total oblivion is ruthless. We exist in what is
barely a story, the ending uncertain, and there’s
something in the darkness that draws us on,
a bridge someone has thrown across a crevasse.
But it is not so. Nothing is timeless—
everything is swept away, even the gods themselves
and their hymns become what sang us
onward to the slaughter.
VIII.
I can’t tell you where I’ve wandered,
much less who I am.
When we said goodbye at the bus station
you threw your arms around me as one might
a corpse, as one who was
completing a circle.
It has become dark.
The fire collapses
and sparks rise
in astonishment.
IX.
The work continues to astonish as we uncover it,
inaccurate at best if not precisely what it is not,
collected from what we were able to achieve,
the current taking everything downstream.
What new grief is this? There is no need for
such suffering. Why can’t it be avoided?
X. I Uncover the End of the Cycle
Fighting against the Odds, I am weary, soon will join those
who have already left. Those who know what I will know
but don’t know yet. Why am I so troubled?
I must obey the whole of the Law—
a spawn, a puppet, an extension
of something larger, an inevitability,
looking for what is half-hiding and half-
hidden, knowing all of it will
worn into ruins or vanish in a fire.
XI.
Beware of … your brother; he is your kind and you understand him
—Wotan, as the Wanderer, in Siegfried
I see something of myself in a salmon spawning
and a leaf carried downstream,
always moving toward dissolution as if by plan.
I chose a spot for the tent and built and fed
the fire, warmed our legs, laughing as a late supper
steamed and hissed, cold beer pulled from the stream,
but although it was just this afternoon
it is already gone, a blue stormy light
over the river, the wind dying, the sunlight fading,
shadows crawling from the woods across the path,
altering nothing except everything is different,
my mood no longer what it was.
XII.
All things go their appointed way; their course you cannot alter.
—Wotan, as the Wanderer, in Siegfried
1. Dead the Tree, but Mighty the Spear
There is a wildness in me I cannot tame
as sunlight through a window
grazes the white tiles,
splintering about.
I forget the good things I have done.
Now I remember. I built the fire to warm us.
Shining yellow aspen leaves leaping in the flames,
bursts of heat pressing into me, at first chilled and then too hot.
Much I sought and much I found,
but what I need to know right now I do not know.
Repeating myself and forgetting more and more
until I have only one question left:
Who can make whole
these fragments when I fall?
2. The Return
Once separated into many I am now made whole,
but the light has gone out and even the afterglow
fades and I can distinguish nothing as if a cloud
has suddenly appeared and covered everything,
as when ingesting the roots of certain flowers
sleep inevitably follows, no more to stir.
I’ve suffered for what I mostly just imagined–
would it matter if I imagined more, did more?
3. Sleep Is Made Impossible
I wove everything I knew into it, everything
I was aware of until the page turned black.
Soon I will know whether I was right or wrong.
Birds have a language even though I
do not know what they are saying.
Should the birds then cease to sing?
But I am more than what I have dreamed,
for who would dream himself
into such darkness?
XIII.
Memories of life’s keenest pleasures
carrying me toward things yet to come,
yet so little did it mean to me that I
almost gave it all away.
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