Chopin on the Radio

CHOPIN ON THE RADIO:

Chopin on the radio: “Ballade No’ 3”.
Strong feelings, strange thoughts stir within me.
Thoughts about consciousness, and “the last breath”;
my mother’s “survival”, long after her “death”.

The Ballades mattered, to my mother and me.
The hours we spent, listening; those old LP’s.
The two of us, silent, by the gramophone;
the music, sinking into flesh and bone.
The emotional impact; urge to laugh, to cry;
she’d dab the occasional tear from her eye.

My rational mind finds no relief
In the “immortal soul”.  I have no belief
in artificial panaceas for grief;
mental devices to allay our fears
when loved ones depart from this vale of tears.
But when I hear music, have memories like this,
I can’t help but hope: perhaps something persists?

Music is mystery; no-one really knows
where it comes from, where it goes.
Patterns of sound are formed, ascend
into the ether; world without end.

Consciousness is mystery.  When the vital spark
is extinguished, blanketed by the dark,
does spirit, with matter, fragment, disperse,
into particles, waves, the universe?

As these waves of sound from the radio,
emerge, pulsing, wherever they go
when they dissolve, into the air,
could they, perhaps, interact somewhere?
Could some part of her consciousness, now far-flung;
some last, lost, minute molecule of Mum,
vibrate, register, recognise with me,
this music of Chopin: “Ballade No’ 3”?

Looking back through my “oeuvre”, I can’t help noticing that I have written an alarming number of poems trying to express what certain pieces of music mean to me.  I say “alarming” because, essentially, all these poems are attempting an impossible task: how can you hope to explain, in words, the “meaning” of a piece of music!  With “Chopin on the Radio”, however, I am not making yet another attempt at achieving the impossible.  With this poem, I am describing my thoughts and emotions upon hearing a piece of music, and trying to explain how these thoughts and feelings mingle with memories of my mother, resulting in speculations about a certain type of “afterlife”.  Although this sounds complicated it is, I think, a simple, universal experience.

Travelling Home for Christmas

“Driving Home for Christmas” by Chris Rea is one of those pop songs – like “Mistletoe and Wine”, “Last Christmas I Gave You My Heart”, “Stop the Cavalry” and a few others – that are resuscitated every year and played on the radio and in shops solely over the Christmas period.  It is relatively more low-key and meditative than most songs of this ilk, but still induces the appropriate warm glow of festive cheer and nostalgia.  I heard it around this time last year, just before setting off on my own journey back to my home town, and it was the stimulus that led to my poem “Travelling Home for Christmas”.

TRAVELLING HOME FOR CHRISTMAS:

“Driving Home for Christmas”; a song, by Chris Rea,
celebrates a rite, enacted every year.
He’s cruising along, radio on; softly falling snow.
Tail-lights gently glimmer; he feels a warming glow.
1,000 memories, cascading in his brain.
He doesn’t mind the holdups; he’ll soon be home again.
Other drivers, just like him, gathered, all around.
Homing, like pigeons, to get their feet on holy ground.

I’m travelling home for Christmas, too; sitting on a train.
Dank air, grey sky, pouring down with rain.
Magical memories; Christmas as a child.
Little Baby Jesus; the lamb, so meek and mild.
Our annual pilgrimage, to mass at midnight.
Waking, to a morning brimful of delight.
Mother in the kitchen; festive table heaving.
Friends, neighbours, relatives, arriving, leaving . . .

My Christmas is less lavish now, more austere.
Numbers of visitors declining, each year.
On Christmas Day, there will be a total of three:
one brother, one reprobate uncle, and me.
We will sit down uneasily, our sins unshriven.
The reprobate uncle will smile, and be forgiven.
Our glasses raised, we will then commence to dine.
The food will be praised; tongues loosened by wine.
A measure of peace and goodwill will be found.
A fitting ceremony, on this holy ground.

Yes, we’re travelling home for Christmas; Chris Rea and I.
Flat fenland countryside; 1,000 memories flit by.
Rain teems down, from an unforgiving sky.

I Could Be Happy

The weather forcasters are currently forecasting snow for my part of the country, and it was the thought of snow – or, more specifically, hailstones – that reminded me of a poem I wrote a few years ago.  I was walking home, one day in May, when a shower of rain suddenly turned into hail.  I kept on walking, trying to ignore the hail, but the hailstones increased in size and velocity, and started “pinging” off the top of my head.  I ended up running the final stretch home, humming – for some unaccountable reason – an old pop song from my youth called “I Could Be Happy”.  I got home and switched the radio on – to hear none other than exactly the same song, immediately coming out of the speakers!  I stood, like a statue, listening until the song finished.  I remembered the name of the band that had the original hit: “Altered Images”, and that their lead singer was an attractive girl with a child-like voice.  I was then shocked by the rado presenter informing me that the song had been Number One in the pop charts on Christmas Day 1981.  I then started musing, sadly, about the ravages of time, and it was these thoughts, combined with the hailstones and the pop song, that inspired the following poem.

I COULD BE HAPPY:

White dandruff flakes
float down, scratched
from ashen curls
of the grey sky-god.

Then, cascading
white pellets.
A rapid fusillade,
pinging, stinging.

I run for home,
for some reason singing
“I could be happy.
I could be happy.”

Hailstones in May.
I open the door.
There is no way
this is funny any more.

Huge wet blotches
on my clothes.
I could be happy.
I could be happy.

Switch on the radio,
what do I hear?
“I could be happy.
I could be happy.”

Infectious rhythms,
washing over me.
Girl-child jigging
in front of my eyes.

Recall so vivid,
could be yesterday.
D.J. says “From
1981, Christmas Day.”

Twenty five years
have gone by!
In twenty five years
I shall be eighty!

Tears drop huge wet
blotches on my clothes.
I could be happy.
I could be happy.

Red eyes in the mirror
stare at grey stubble.
I could be happy.
I could be happy.

Every Time

I am not a great lover of jazz singers, jazz songs, or songs from “The Great American Songbook”.  One exception to this, however, is the song “Every Time we say Goodbye”, by Cole Porter.  I first heard it, ages ago, on an old album of songs by Cole Porter and Irving Berlin; the singer was Ella Fitzgerald.  On that very first hearing, it moved me to tears.  It still does so, to this day.  I think it’s the combination of Ella’s immaculate vocal delivery, the lyrics, and the sweeping – almost lush – orchestral arrangement.  I first thought the arrangement was by the well-known George Shearing; only to find, after researching into it, that it was by a guy I’d never heard of before, called Buddy Bregman.

That old album was lost, or mislaid, long ago.  I never replaced it, and the only time I get to hear the song nowadays is on the rare occasion when it is played on some radio programme like “Desert Island Discs” or “Private Passions”.  I’ve written before about the influence of music on poetry; about the death of my mother, and the universality of the mother-son relationship.  The poem “Every Time” brings all these themes together.

Every Time:

“Every time we say goodbye, I die a little.
Every time we say goodbye, I wonder why, a little. . . .”*

Every time I hear Ella sing
“Every Time We Say Goodbye”;
such emotional pull on my heartstrings,
I’m transfixed, undone, want to cry.

Only the Buddy Bregman arrangement,
of course, it goes without saying,
wreaks such emotional derangement.
“Play it again!  Please!”  I am praying.

The inevitable image arises;
is held, fixed, in my mind’s eye.
The so infrequent visits to my mother,
and their ending, with the sad sigh.

“TaTa for now, love”, she would say.
“TaTa.  Let’s not say goodbye”.
I’d kiss her; slowly walk away.
Turn my face to the impassive sky.

And that’s why Ella gets to me.
That’s why she makes me want to cry.
Because I really did die, a little,
every time Mum and I said goodbye.

*”Every Time we say Goodbye” by Cole Porter.

 

 

Delius and the Cuckoo

I have tried, on at least three occasions, to write a poem about a piece of music that has moved me.  I’ve not been too happy with the finished products, and it should have been no surprise to me, because what’s the point in trying to write a poem about a piece of music, in the first place?  Surely I should have realized that it’s not possible to describe, in words, what the music is expressing!  Nevertheless, that is what I was trying to do in a short poem about Debussy’s “Claire de Lune”.  In another poem, I wrote about how my feelings of sadness – after the death of my father – were deepened, listening to a Norfolk Rhapsody by Vaughan Williams.  That poem wasn’t a complete failure, I think; probably because I was writing about my own feelings, rather than trying to describe the music itself.  The height of my folly came when I was so obsessed by Satie’s “Gymnopedies No’1” that I ended-up writing a poem where each word stood for a separate note of music!

A few days ago, I happened to hear, purely by accident, Delius’s orchestral tone poem “On Hearing the First Cuckoo of Spring”  twice on the same day, on the radio.  Inevitably, I was overcome, again, by the impulse to write a poem about it.  This time, I’m relatively happy with the end-result.  I think it’s because the simplicity and repetitive nature of the cuckoo’s call is a useful stabilising factor.

Delius and the Cuckoo:

Delius heard the first cuckoo of spring.
He sat, enraptured, hearing it sing.
Hypnotic call, from invisible bird.
His spirits lifted, his sentiments stirred.

Plain, yet plangent; simple, yet strong.
The lilting rhythms of a cradle-song.
In silent repose, he began to hear
soft strings, lush woodwind, in his inner ear.

Rippling waters, fluttering breezes.
Momentum gathers, then slowly eases.
Cyclical patterns, round and round.
Fleeting, yet recurring, that haunting sound.

“Goodbye!  Goodbye!” it sings, from on high.
Sadness wells up; a tear in his eye.
He must hold its message; capture its cry.
Like all living things, it is doomed to die.

Moments in time; staves on a page.
Transient memories, frozen with age.
All is stillness, now; he himself long gone.
Only the music, the music lives on.