An audio excerpt (196K)

A certain violinist had a beautiful violin
But before he had had time to play her long and listenz
To her tones as such, he was compelled to renounce music
And sell her, and go on a far journey, and leave his violin
in the hands of the violin case.

What was there to do? It is said You cannot live life in quarter tones.
What was there to do? It is said you cannot live your life in silence.
What was there to do? It is said you cannot live your life playing scales.
What was there to do? It is said you cannot live your life listening to the Americans.

What was there to do? It is said you cannot live your life in your room and not go out.
What was there to do? It is said music disobeys
and reaches the prince's courtyard ever farther than smell and grits its
notes like teeth and gives us food and drink.
And orders a fire to be lighted, famished silk to hang over it and repetitions to be sharpened.

What was there to do? It is said it is the violinists who do not sleep.
What was there to do? It is said we think and don't think; we are asleep.
What was there to do? It is said music sinks into the mire up to its neck,
wants to crawl out, but cannot.
What was there to do? It is said the violin was a swan, seized the boy, falling
upwards to some height above the earth.

for Meyer Shapiro

I fell with my father through space
in a space module as round
as your thumb.

My father remarked of the earth
how they divided everything

By twos or by one (a joke)
It was better by far to visit the other side
than stay stranded in the self

We passed the poor Americas
South Africa striped as a zebra
And Russian artists who could not practice their art.

The art of the grid
While others wondered whether we had seriously
judged the grid

But all over the earth the artists painted
what they wanted
Except where they could not-or what they needed-
and did not

And my father worried aloud
Knocking on the moonlit plastic module door

When we fell, we screamed
But we were safe in Texas, safe as Texas , safe
as Texas in Texas

Eating bread not electrons
Madly in love with the earth.

lingo 5

Books in print by David Shapiro
Books in print by Connie Beckley

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