Song in a Car

Content behind radiator and hum of engine,

Driving the hundred miles

Through pastures pathed between stars,

I glide in the arms of her fragrance

Singing decimated bars of Tristan,

Rudolpho, Alfredo, Hoffman-

Deliver in strident passions the fragments

Of my repertoire. Moved to song

Yet out of song, I reach mechanically

For the radio, and static gathers

Into low sound from the arc

Of night beyond the swollen stars.

New Orleans... radio... . act two

Tosca. Tubes crackle with the strain.

On local stations they rock and scream,

A woman scourges civil rights,

A man advocates nuclear war-

My mood broken, fragrance burned away,

I search angrily for the faltering act,

Mario tortured, Scarpia hot on Tosca

Like a scorpion at a foot,

Tosca singing Vissi d'arte

Then stabbing a man in ceremony

Between candles-it comes in waves

Like applause from overseas, spits

Out in the tinny declamation

Of my two-bit radio. Enough!

Nervous and songless I weight the pedal

And take a shrill B flat over the castle wall.