I live in the world of the world,
its rings of interior .
He lived in the circle of his hat
and through its gold weave
gazed at the angels
like grasshoppers in the heat.
I see the white sweep of his wings,
but I paint white paint.
I lay the whole weight of my gift
on his stooped back.
Charles Tomlinson
ODE TO DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH
To what far room of never-to-return
The raw brass singles out and calls us-
A tale too often told , one old already
Long before the pen of Mandelstam
Entangled itself in the Georgian's moustaches.
Those feelers found him out, and you survived
To play the fool and to applaud the play
That you must act in . Notes told less than words
And now tell more , each vast adagio dense
With the private meaning of its public sorrow.
II
You stole the Fate Motif from Wagner's
Ring
(Great artists steal and minor merely borrow)–
Fate had declared itself as daily fact:
This day might be the allotted span. Tomorrow.
?
Stalin was dead . But not his heirs , and not
