A Breakfast Story for D.M.

Here’s a story for breakfast tea- not heavy, a little sweet, nicely piquant. Like good stories, it may even have a point.

My grandmother ( a contralto from Indiana, Sembrich pupil, made her living as an oratorio soloist at St. Bartholomew's Cathedral and with the NY Phil.) started taking me to the opera when I was 7. This was the old Metropolitan Opera house, shabby gold and mulberry, but still resonant with the echoes of Garden, the De Reskes, Caruso, Ponselle, on and on; and scented by faded perfume from the the vanished hordes of swanky rich folk with their diamond tiaras, a little sweaty too as men and women from the garment district had listened avidly from the top balconies.

I was immediately taken by this atmosphere, this big dark space and the teeny people in bizarre bright outfits screaming away. A strange and wonderful hallucination. My grandmother’s explanation of opera plots was also mysterious and obliquely exciting. On Rigoletto- She: “The Duke is a cad and ruins young women.” Me (7 remember): “What does that mean? How can he ‘ruin’ them.” She with accelerating firmness: “He just...just..ruins them.” In connection with Magdalena she used the word, “strumpet.”; the first and last time I heard the word used in ordinary speech. It wasn’t that she was pretentious – she wasn’t. She had just memorized a lot of of libretti.

Anyhow, in the intermissions, a tall, quite old, very pale woman with commanding posture, white hair, round cobalt blue glasses, lavish flowing clothes and moving like a great exotic bird, would pass majestically through the aisles of the orchestra to hushed deference. A small dapper man was always in attendance.

“That’s Jeritza,” my grandmother whispered. Another mystery, Then she told the story of this great star of the Vienna State Opera, famous for her beauty, her glamour, her (I don’t remember how she got this point across, maybe by referring darkly to “scandals”.) many lovers, her gleaming voice and how Richard Strauss wrote Daphne for her; how she was the first woman to sing Tosca lying on the floor, head stage front.

It seems that this astounding creature was now in our midst because for years, whenever she would appear in NY, a dentist from New Jersey would come to her dressing room , leave flowers, proclaim his admiration and his (discreetly) undying love. He was not pushy but unfailing, and a certain friendship developed. They corresponded. After many years, and when her career had ended (I think there were movies too), she came back to NY and married him. He was, as he would have to be if the story is to be a good one, the small dapper gent in her train.

CRANE SONG

Ah,
White cranes with long red legs
Soar northward through the empty sky.
Their cry of greeting shakes the cold air,
But they fly on and do not stop here.
What are the winds that carry them?
They leave behind their warm blue lakes,
Warm breezes, green canopies of trees,
As they abandon jeweled palaces in the South.
What are the winds that carry them?

Ah
White cranes with long red legs
Soar Northward through the empty sky.
Their cry of greeting shakes the cold air,
But they fly on and do not stop here.
They fly to the frozen steppe beside a frozen sea.
There beneath a silver sky,
They will raise their wings and long red legs in dance
And draw the spring up through the ice.
Who showed them this ancient dance?

Ah
White cranes with long red legs
Soar northward through the empty sky.
Their cry of greeting shakes the cold air,
But they fly on and do not stop here.
What are the winds that carry them?

Faithful to the cycles of what enduring love,
Why do they call to me?
Who taught them this ancient song?

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This song is from 'Crossings on A Bridge of Light' which recounts Gesar King of Ling's voyage to save his mother from the bonds of hell. It is dedicated with love to Deborah Marshall.

The full text will be published next month by Mill City Press and will be available at Amazon.com.

Fragments of Vanished Peoples

The following were written to accompany works by Joan Anderson (www.Joanandersonarts.com). To me, her work so poignantly invokes lives of vanished beings in unknown, but slightly familiar worlds.


1) DRAGON TABARD

Radiant but silver banded and aloof
He humbly received his father’s throne.
He raised up altars and made offerings to the sky.
He raised up altars and made offerings to the mountain gods.
He raised up altars and made the offerings of living beings
To the rivers and the streams.

2) PHOENIX and DRAGON

The Golden Dragon
Dwells in the hidden tree
That holds the earth and sky apart
And is the resting place of thirteen suns.

The phoenix,
Unconscious as a rainbow
Dives upward
Through the leaves and branches of the sky.

3) SMOKE AND WATER

Where is she;
Her small feet dancing,
Her small hands holding offerings
On upturned palms?

Where did she go?

4) GOLD CLASP and OJO GRID

The old slaves, sisters
Seized far off and many years ago,
They have served her.
The sisters have bathed and dressed her.
They have oiled her hair,
And they have watched,

5) WATER TRELLIS DRAGON'S ROBE

Even a mountebank has a moment
When beauty transforms him.

“This verse was etched on the grave stone of a magician, reputed to be able to enable others to see spirits. He was brought to court by the king. He gave the king give many foul tasting brews which made him ill. But, the King, rose from his fever and deliriously danced across the floor as if he were a god. When the King recovered, he remembered nothing and had the magician executed.”

7) HAWKMOTH

“The King gave the master of the hunt a robe so beautiful that all envied him. Later, during a hunt, A jealous courtier shot the master of the hunt with an arrow through the heart. He claimed that he thought he had aimed at a golden pheasant.”

8) OJO

Oh,
The new consort looks down
And shyly smiles.
Oh she blushes.
Oh how we are charmed.

9) CLOUD ROBE

The blind weaver felt the movements of the sky,
Imagining range on range of white mountain clouds,
Snow rising in the air.

Her clattering shuttle
Echoed like sure footsteps as she wove.

The king received the robe she made.
He held it silently, then had it hidden.
"No human," he said, "can wear it."

*

Bugaku, Japanese Court Dance- Tokyo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFErNl3FvM4&feature=related