Fugue, Harpsichord
For Sylvia Marlowe Out of her left hand fled the stream, from her right the rain puckered the surface, drop by drop, the current splayed in a downward daze until it hit the waterfall, churned twigs and leaves, smashed foam over stone: from her fingers slid eddies, bubbles rose, the fugue heaved up against itself, against its own falling: digressed in curlicues under shadowed banks, around root tangles and beaver-gnawed sticks. She had the face of a pike, the thrusting lower jaw and silvered eye, pure drive. The form fulfilled itself through widowhood, her skin mottled with shingles, hands crooked, a pain I fled. Now that tempered tumult moves my time into her timing. Far beyond her dying, my tinnitus, I am still through the thrum of voices trying to hear.
Copyright © 2018 by Rosanna Warren. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 11, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.
“Sylvia Marlowe was one of the great harpsichordists of the twentieth century, a student of Nadia Boulanger and Wanda Landowska, and herself a famous teacher for many years at the Mannes School of Music in New York City. She was a close friend of my family, and I grew up listening to her recordings of Bach and Couperin and often visiting her in New York City. I have tried to translate into words my impression of her playing Bach’s preludes and fugues. Of course, the poem plays on multiple senses of fugue.”
—Rosanna Warren
Rosanna Warren
Born in 1953, Rosanna Warren is the author of several poetry collections and served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.