Lament upon the Closing of the Northern Conservatory in Bangor, Maine
BARON WORMSER
Form amends our laboring nerves.
Without this blessing, plain life grows eager and soft.
The handshaking brio of feckless energy
Taints all contentment; gain becomes a reason.
Musicians could do otherwise.
Instead they chose a solitude that flowers,
All frustration funnelled
Into an hour or two of studied power.
Erring or swift, fingers remain fingers,
Yet the famous frozen music of mortar rises and falls and
fades. .
The red bricks are a little graver.
No longer do people intuit what they can't completely do.
No longer are tempers lost and restored.
Hope is not looked for.
I am afraid of how cold it is in the cold winter
Without the genius of the little conservatory!
A busy silence sits on the city.
Places are palpable, but no one has ever
Inhabited one of Schubert's songs.
The chance to visit some small perfection has gone.
IN A CAB
Delighted at rush hour
To flaunt his emigré wisdom,
The Russian cabbie tells me that
This country
Is heaven: jazz, enough food,
No whispering,
Cars that work. He smells of onion
And cheap hair cream, wears
A tweed cap. What is the American
Politics of belabored possibility to him?
Structure
33 lines · 6 stanzas