Moments With Shostakovich

MOMENTS WITH SHOSTAKOVICH

for C.E.


I am fourteen it is New York
he is walking towards me, his sallow
face his glasses the two goons beside him
keeping him in line, the world's
greatest composer (Strauss has died)
walking towards me towards me,
I stand in awe but try not to look
impressed, I am a kid, as a kid
I am always performing for myself
just like the poet I would become
or am I, I am I am a poet Williams
said was he speaking for me then
there with the Waldorf-Astoria
then the classiest joint in America
hovering over D. D. Shostakovich
walking towards fat little Robertas
Jacobus whose heart filled immensely
with the authenticity of this
unbelievable occasion, me with him
on this very street in my own town
forever I am real! this is now! this is
the real thing the real world, I am in it
at last, here he comes the man
whose music lives in my head
we share space, I belong to the world!
By now they had passed, maybe
he was smoking, I probably was,
maybe he caught my adoring eye
maybe he saw it was all too full
of self-importance to see him,
too busy with l-am-with-Shosty
to actually be with him, there,
on the grey street, a frail unhappy
looking man between his two
apathetically vigilant bodyguards
and they too might like him have
looked at me then looked away.

Robert Kelly

RK: Actually, a few months ago I wrote a number of pieces 'listening through' some of the Shostakovich preludes and fugues. That was part of a big cycle of compositions, working also through Biber sonatas, Bax orchestral works, and most of the Mozart piano concertos. At the moment, I am working on a text 'listening through' Frances Prelude, Chorale and Fugue as performed by Robin Freund-Epstein, towards a live enactment with her of music and text next spring. But I'm very happy that you made me write a new Shostakovich poem, one that, as you see, breaks into the stifled air of my childhood, to reclaim a memory thaf s important to me. A child, even a child, is in the world.

Posted over on American Poetry Review