for
Myrna
you were
eighteen
you thought
you needed
to be loved
for
ego reasons
and as in some
fairy story
featuring a
speaking animal
fate granted
your wish
and you
were loved for
decades &
to desperation
as if the
world itself
and time,
garlanded in flowers
had brought
some Johannes Brahms me
to sacrifice
himself to
some Clara
Schumann you,
but one whose
plangent piano
I could not
hear
except in dreams
& even
there, hushed
lest some
chance intruder
descend a
staircase suddenly
and find us
happily
eye to eye
and I
now like
Joseph
seated in
splendor
on a foreign
throne
seeing you
come finally
like his lost
brothers, Benjamin
& Judah
& all
excuse myself
to weep in my
private chamber
knowing at
last
that he
with whom is
no variableness
neither shadow
of turning
meant it only
for your good,
and mine
and we go
now not with
the sackbuts,
viols, music
& dancing
of an antique
wedding
tiptoeing on
the straw of summer,
but walking
sweet words
to their
purposes, paging
through
dictionaries, catalogs
of beauty,
sisterly,
fraternally
advancing what
eighteen
couldn’t have
dreamed of,
endower this
universal—
patroness of
song
Belleville
June 23, 2003