Gap Gardening

by Rosmarie Waldrop

  but suddenly we’ve been

  always

  movement toward presence

  a secret

  turns away

  calmly

  _____

  Give back what disappers

  as if a detour in forgetting

  could

  differences for four hands

  for Michael Gizzi,

  his part in it

  I

  CLARA & ROBERT SCHUMANN,

  AN INTRODUCTION

  clara, i need to talk to you. These keys are slippery. Fame tips your fingers. Between them, staves run out of brief happiness into the cold. Run. Seven children through the house. The Rhine into the sea.

  Robert. Alarming symptoms, increasing frequency, A all around him, fear of death, shivering fits. Plunges: A-major into the river, and motion is stillness, the banks of the Rhine begin to flow along the water’s stanched melody.

  Clara, play for us. The performance over, your name drops back out of the air. Records now, of course. Groove dreams whipped stiff. You never stepped twice. Mortal moments, climate of blood. A fire that could melt our souls, but shades, gently, into the shapeless sea.

  II

  CLARA & ROBERT,

  A COURTSHIP

  clara and robert, two rare talents, here in daguerreotype, smiling, a moment fixed between squalls of music.

  Clara, the name looks good on a poster, announces, excessively thin, the six-year-old pianist, but “with more strength than six boys.”

  Clara in the “chiroplast” (for proper posture). Clara walking three hours a day (accompaniment: trees) “to get her nerves solid.”

  Robert in love, and time presses: “All of fourteen she is, skipping and running about like a child.”

  . . .

  Green, green grass, all of fourteen and skipping and wild. But Robert fords rivers of coffins. Wind whips his eyes. A brother is not immortal, a mother not to take with you, lodged in the spine. Only the piano can vary the pitch of bruised eyelids, pit color against pain, rainbows in tenuous air. In this lies comfort. Solid slabs of sleep. Yet he wishes to be out of place. Already we see distress, extreme pulsating rushes of water.

  Clara is famous and on tour.

  “Clara, Clara, I’ll put my chords in order. I’m clear about my heart, moody and restless, broken, violent, improbable and proven. It’s impossible: Your father cannot refuse. I have complete confidence in my music and presentiments of death. I cannot stand in the wind. I’m more like venetian blinds than either heat or cold. Yet, though you say you love me, you go on tour with your father.”

  Cholera in Paris, recital washed out into hollow caution. But Vienna, Clara, there you turn pages. Of history, the “Appassionata,” desires, whose and for what, Father Wieck’s, his cloven hoof, his greed. Robert offended by absence.

  Blows you the prick of a pen found on Beethoven’s grave, rusty seal on a dream of waters stranger than deeper bodies to come. Metallic sighs, you know it gets lonely holding a pen, not a common rusty prayer. Cadence continues into color. Completed by an introspective slowness neither simple nor soft. Robert goes to court, minor key and cause.

  Clara, your fingers drift, parallel fish, through preludes and fugues. There’s time, you think, each drop a cool, nude promise. It’s terribly time for Robert, for shortcuts to master technique: a fine contrivance, mechanical, sling up the fourth finger, straitjacket, the weak held straight and still and will never again move a key.

  He is all clouds and shadow. Vacillates when he stops to think. Threatened by rivers. His quest for agitation sidetracks, restless eddies, fluid of eyes. He’d like to be still.

  Clara give up something by marrying? Never occurs to him. Or her.

  Any two are opposite. You walk on sound. The coldest wind blows from the edges of fear. Which has been written down. Passion’s not natural. But body and soul are bruised by melancholy, fruit of dry, twisted riverbeds. Loss discolors the skin. At times you devour apples, at others bite into your hand.

  III

  CLARA & ROBERT,

  A MARRIAGE

  into happiness, into the Well-Tempered Clavier, Robert, perhaps his two souls alas, his wayward moods, now into Du meine Seele, all around him, a celebration for voice.

  Form is defined as fits the years. Yet to stretch against softening: “fragments, aphorisms, sheer reveling in strangeness.” Plunge, head-on, into his fears. Overlapping keys: the large tune, the constant, could be lost in assuming endings. Golden light, not a blank which lies to your worries, a splendid body to body, relations of like and surprise worthy of being desired.

  . . .

  And Clara. Cool and green, your moments, hammered in light. Love under your skin. New color of keys. The very morning strokes you, a secret music, before scales start running, and children’s feet.

  Clara on music: Not for a tickle of ears. I feel more clearly intimate. Expecting is a twofold breath, a second voice enters, subterranean stream. More elements compressed into relation, in smaller circles. There are only two sins: denying the sound, denying the silence. Together they let the soul move through its inner space.

  But many times impatient to practice: “Music’s my vice, my secret pleasure and detachment.” Thin walls, the evil of. Confluence of sounds. Packed into the same dream, envy and desire: to carve into air too deep for our errors. A static stream.

  By what authority, wistful, her eyes on her piano, composer comes before pianist, husband before wife, and babies, babies. Run. Three children through the house. Rename the dimensions Marie, Elise, Julie, tune cut, repeated, turned in and out, voice close to sleep.

  A complex grid, the fields of love, the way your mother bore you in the streets of Leipzig, the way Robert’s skin stretches into your body, name wrapped in flesh. Wet rush. The land green and pregnant again.

  “What will become of my work? But Robert says children are blessings.”

  Your body all around him.

  Technique and passion, intelligence, grace. Dissonance rendered as dissonance, fire unfolding, electric. Much for your eye on meaning your body blazes the full force of the score, whirls our vertigo wide.

  . . .

  Run. Three children through the house. “What will become of my work?” Robert says procreation is music, a measure stolen on shivers, on fear of death.

  Children all around him.

  Into travels. You hold your head up. Pianist and wife. “I wish you would interpret my feelings a little more generously, accenting warmth which I mean central. I also owe it to my reputation not to retire completely. I shall be quite forgotten in a few years when perhaps we shall want to make a tour.”

  Robert would like to be still.

  Clara, you won’t be forgiven. Your secret pleasure and detachment. Cheeks flush, you mount the platform, ride his floundering storms.

  “Companion to Clara.”

  “The artist’s husband.”

  “Ah, Herr Schumann. Are you also a lover of music?”

  . . .

  IV

  CLARA SUGGESTS AN APPOINTMENT

  could he not lift a baton, he had studied, not stand on a podium, with compositions his own and a wife and children?

  . . .

  Asymmetry is incurable. Sometimes understanding comes late. Image under eyelid. Rhythmic spasm. Expansion more diffident by means of an additional slow movement. All tempi are too fast. Compressed, melodic, large scale from minimal motive which is a bannister for all four movements to go safely without fear of falling, death, or violent shivers.

&nb
sp; Run. Four children through the house.

  Clara too confident, too hopeful, too black and white, because the piano.

  Runs. Clara. Her life, competently, hers, his, menaced and melancholy. Alarming symptoms, increasing frequency, 440 hertz, A all around him, cold wind at his heels, he marries the river.

  . . .

  The length of time Robert stands silent, common in solitary men, but judged unsuitable in a conductor: to take half an hour to bring down the baton? Unable to explain the note in his head, the waiting river, the reason, the parts to correct, the silence insistent. Didn’t notice the strings had stopped, the choir left.

  Run. Five children through the house.

  . . .

  In the grip of this theme, in the grip of fear. Bold repetition toward stillness, dangerous, with more than the usual figment. Full circle. All roads lead to A. Alarming symptoms, shivering fits, A in his ears, A all around him, aching orchestration and horror of arpeggios.

  Clara plays. Her touch contains impossible alternativos. Containing is melancholy, but what other safeguard? Clara, play. Your belly swollen. Already late all around him. The theme enters in poignant nakedness, a momentary illumination, while embroidering sequence with gratitude and not abandoning, not ever abandoning a single note.

  Run. Five children through the house.

  “The noise of the carnival night changes into silence. The tower clock strikes six.” Vertical sevenths fade along the river. He walks with a different voice now. Without preparation. Pushes to perplexity the change of tempo to wash off the sharp glandular stench. Abrupt all around him. Plunges, A-major, into the Rhine. All tempi are too fast, all notes A, all keys Clara’s.

  . . .

  V

  WHEN A TRILL IS NOT FOLLOWED BY ANY NOTE,

  AT THE END, FOR INSTANCE,

  UNDERSTANDING IS LEFT TO ITSELF

  dissonant chords, exhausted with apprehension, Robert fished out of his Symphony by boatmen, each day of his death blue under your skin.

  . . .

  Jealous, Clara? He tossed himself first, the first stone. All madmen are beautiful. His body, naked amulet washed bland. You have no choice now. Run. Six children through the house. No giving in to shivers that strike the keys from your hand. You can’t afford to give up ship. To sink into depression is a long blue that must be stopped. Can you stop it?

  To ward off epidemics the college of physicians approves the firing of guns. A pianist’s touch a personal matter, intangible. Too deeply earnest your eyes (blue). Your contrast between reality and difference, between grief. He of your love. Enter the only way your body. Love a matter of white cells. How long can you stand on your fingertips? His lips come to you out of a bandage of fog. You owe him. Another child, another stranger. Six children, not enough, not enough to drown the note in his brain all around him.

  Clara. A schedule of constant travel. Six children want dinner. Keys plough the air. Clara, devoted, one of our finest, desperately holds on to the keys slip through her fingers, the works of Robert Schumann nearly drowned, a wound lodged under her skin. Clara, your sorrow, you hold it in, impossible alternativo, dig into the keyboard, touch gone to pain.

  . . .

  Run. Seven children through the house, seven children afraid of thunder, seven children in bed with the measles, one in his grave. And Robert. A white cell. Silence mounts to the ceiling, gelatinous waves.

  . . .

  A degree of impartiality, an intensity you demand of performance and give. Rip him whole from silence according to your art, a priestess. “You would hardly believe how the reverence for Robert is increasing. I cannot help feeling sad when it was here he made so many vain attempts.”

  . . .

  “Ever since May the process of recovery has been arrested.”

  Plunged into his fear, the promise of bottom. Now the dark wave has folded over him and the heavenly music. A dead man’s skin all around him.

  Each day of his death. Nothing to hold but by a lame finger, immobile, still, a storm in the staves, tricks played by a postcard of pleasure. Not clarified by slipping into the river, his Rhenish Symphony. He can’t be fished.

  “I have pissed myself into the Rhine like a nightingale in vain washed into a fear of time. I confess its music is lovelier than my almost, almost, like breathing into your blue water. I hold I sang myself into a deep thirst, endless, like desire.”

  Clara, you won’t be forgiven. Surviving. And by how long. Too practical, too competent. Not yours, the seal of pathos. Clara, I need to talk to you. I too admire the gift for destruction. I need your help on the long way round to death. Difficult. For all but the most sure-footed. You hold the keys, navigate the narrows, the space of music in the proportions of blood and air. Strongly the chords, the cascades of angels, falling in counterpoint and entire conclusion.

  Play for us, Clara. Play the music we breathe.

  Differences for Four Hands uses Lyn Hejinian’s Gesualdo as a syntactical matrix. A direct quote from the book has been appropriated for Robert Schumann’s voice.

  streets enough to welcome snow

  Kind Regards

  for & from Barbara Guest & Douglas Oliver

  1. Kind Regards

  Your air of kind regards

  kind randomness

  of a museum

  canvas sneakers

  along with raspberry lips

  *

  lately you say I’ve had an awkward

  pull

  toward the past tense

  my remarks renovate

  details in oil

  *

  pantoufles all over again

  in the slippery something that

  should be your mind

  does it matter about heels

  2. Silent as a Clam

  yesterday I saw a word

  stopped

  in the breath its

  natural home

  *

  mouthy dreams with fishing

  lines attached

  such fierce hope in a hook

  night crawls on

  so spooky in a German fashion

  I picture it

  deepening into

  a body of water

  *

  confused terrain and pubic

  hair a movement

  of its own the

  shuddering air

  3. Salt

  the house accepts me tentatively

  grey

  saltbeaten

  and relaxed sand

  drags across the floor but its

  stomach muscles stretching toward

  the tide line green sheet

  draws back

  taking its image

  a few gulls flung for direction

  *

  the instant stretches into lateness

  and onions

  spoil the effect

  not a perfect day

  *

  I admire your worrying away

  (in your own phrase)

  at sentences I also like

  the porchlamp fishing rod

  even the baby its bundle of blankets

  but especially that wink always back

  of your words

  nearly avoiding exact reference

  4. Correspondence

  the piano chooses conspiracy

  the way it seals the room

  (and you pulling his beard all the while)

  like a ship torpedoed those

  sounds too large and shiny

  step suddenlyr />
  into a different time-scale

  distance

  quiet water

  *

  easy equations like chords of sunlight

  or the color blindness of one pursued

  by after-images

  *

  clearly more serious

  by correspondence

  without the

  groceries of sociability

  5. No Hurry to Struggle

  a sore throat and memories

  the moment clings

  *

  even though a swarm of light

  behind your lids

  self-firing

  neurons

  a little energy goes a long

  residue

  Dutch oven

  still

  the lid can’t hold the “flavor of eyes”

  *

  at first kind

  (regards) then comfortable stratagems

  now only our tension left

  above water

  before you disconnect the ripples and dizziness

  pulse fastened

  lucidly

  on my left retina

  whistles across wave-tops

  6. Drawbridge

  missing premonitions in the

  afternoon I stuff

  the air with errors and

  revise my walks

  because of the glass door

  I welcome your visits

  *

  we talk as long as we can

  there are amazements

  you like to stray into and

  my body’s only

  one of them

  *

  rubbing against the outside

  to avoid as best I can

  the steep slope inward

  I like the shreds of scenery

  I can carry into the lamp-light

  hesitant shrubs like a tentative