I've been writing, and thanks to Tupelo Press publishing a poem a day during December. Click here to read more about the 30/30 Project, and read nine of my fabulous new colleagues, including Tupelo's founder and publisher, acclaimed poet Jeffrey Levine. Below is my poem for Day 27. Thank you for reading, and if you are able and so inlined, for supporting my work and the creative artistry of a fellow non-profit organization, another innovative and vital small business.
__
The Ferryman’s Day Off (or, Charon takes a break)
I.
It must be a thankless job
rowing folks from shore
to bank for anything but
a little coin
Were you
a writer
you’d get stories
prompts day after day
after…
but you’d have to
remember them in-
between shifts across
the Styx or Lethe
(Did rowers operate
the waters of forgetfulness?
Consult the ancients…)
Besides patrons
do you
talk to
anyone else
save your colleagues?
Only
if your job is rowing
dead souls across
the pungent canals
of Venice because
face it Charon
your ferryboat is
now a pimped-out
Gondola
__
II. Post-scriptum (Death in Venice)
Of course the gods
have fled, Friedrich.
No one listens to Britten anymore.
You will meet an operatic Doppelgänger,
a factotum, a fay traveler,
no doubt. He rows you well.
Dionysus bests
Apollo with choral dances
and a boy Eros.
Yes
passion leads to knowledge,
Phaedrus. Drink this cup
before the curtain falls.
__
III. Song of the Night, (or Rowing across the Wörthersee with Mahler)
“Do you know how
to make a trumpet?
You take a hole
and wrap brass around it”
is how Mahler
answered the question
“How do you compose?”
His Seventh Symphony
the odd-child
Song of the Night
began in a boat
as he was rowed
across a lake in
Southern Austria.
“Wait. What is that”
“Pardon me, Herr?”
“Yes, that is it –
Your oars played
the start of
my new work!”
It conjures Charon
rowing the soon-
dead artist
across the Styx
__
N.B.: The references in the “Post-scriptum” section of the poem are to Schiller and Hölderlin, and Britten’s operatic adaptation of Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice. The third section is based on the origins of the Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) symphony referenced.
This poem is for Steven White.
