Читать книгу Eventually One Dreams the Real Thing - Marianne Boruch - Страница 17

Notation Gregorian

after Kyriale seu Ordinarium Missae, author unknown

To note the inevitable is a most steady terrible job.

Diamonds pox the score, but the other puncta, little

square notes for the chant, many have tails

bedraggled kites can’t get rid of either, the day officially

gloom now, treachery head-on in high wind.

Wily punctum: called virga and often doubled

thus the bivirga, two quavers united by a slur.

It’s a quaver the throat knows, locked

in middle earth and ice. Beware.

But the apostropha is never found alone, e.g. —

in woods, where night falls

like a folktale. Not true! Famine is this

very soundtrack, the least-loved child left there

far from the river, a sacrifice, the yet-to-be bass clef

of any desperate mind. I’d grant

maybe a hungry second girl, both quavers

tap tapping it out.

If you think too hard down centuries about ways

we got here, you can’t think at all.

Don’t ask how an apostropha works finally.

Except I found a stray root in Greek: to turn, to turn away.

And a history of addressing

an imaginary person. In regard to

a repercussion is always to be made — agreed,

off whatever hard-hit note you

don’t see coming, that faint echo down after each

keeps bruising. Minor —

never minor. And beauty

is blue black.

I guess one hears or

does not hear, an inborn thing like that dot to the right

of the square means pause because

I certainly understand hesitation, shame, embarrassment,

the world-without-end medieval underneath

brain, heart

my heart, stop, breathe. Ditto the plain English of

according to circumstances they may be sung

lightly crescendo or decrescendo. That’s depending

on the angle of the stake in the heart put there by

god help us. And how huge

dark trees when

all is lost, those children dawned.