Mozart

A coach speeds along the roads of Europe,

Little Mozart enthroned inside, exhilarated,

Watching the landscape vanish behind,

Into Backwardsland, his private kingdom,

Complete with its own geography and laws,

A realm of children, all happy and good...

So he muses, as the coach clatters onward,

With Papa, his faithful ervant, at his side.

Vast operas swell within the boy’s heart,

Tales of exotic prince and their courts,

With he the benevolent castle-building autocrat.

His finger picks out just the right note on the clavier,

His tongue tosses out the exact unsurpassable word!


Quartets: pure unearthly realms of sound,

Eddying energy, growling agitation, radiant streams,

Violins etching diamond-point moments

On glass, and behind it all a solemn stillness,

Simple as a morning cobweb in the sun...


Dead...dead...his father, Leopold,-dead!

His own growth was dear Papa’s decline...

How many times had father accused him

Of hastening his death with his waywardness,

As the old man waited, paced, fretted, waited

For ever rarer, ever briefer letters from his son?

All too often Wolfgang had failed the one

Who had created him ,loved him, encouraged

Each step, sacrificed so much for his sake,

Infusing him with all his knowledge and pride.

And now there is guilty relief and terrible freedom-

Never, never, never to hear that voice again,

Offering encouragement and counsel...


Symphonies ascend out of chaos

As the bailiff world beats down the door...

Bent over the final chorus of Die Zauberflöte,

Mozart strains after a serene simplicity,

Earth made heaven in rippling auroras,

Each instrument soaring to curtain-fall,

Death confronted, converted, overcome.


As Mozart lies dying, his pet canary strikes up

Innocently trilling merry tunes by its master,

A mockery too cruel that strains his fevered nerves

Until the offending bird is removed.

On the desk the Requiem lies unfinished,

Leopold, the hooded judge, betrayed by his son,

Looms before him now, a dire revenant,

Bringing black sobbing tremors and clamour,

The crushed soul weeping in penitence.

The clock strikes: he slips into oblivion,

Lips mouthing a last breath of music,

Some indistinguishable irrepressible phrase.