For the Austrian composer, Arnold Schoenberg.
“The emancipation of dissonance,” you called it.
Did they suspect, when you began?
When you stepped quickly to the podium, rubbing your fingers,
and turned toward them with the traditional slight nod?
They were still settled comfortably in their seats, arms slack,
as you gathered each sound in your fingers,
drawing the notes from your yielding musicians.
You pulled the orchestra onward and in,
lifting and swelling the upright basses that tumbled smoothly down your wrists,
sweeping inexorably into
no,
the wrong, wrong place; the audience winced, shifted,
and you, deliberate and heedless,
with one taut cupped hand supporting the violas
on that one excruciatingly long chord,
continued to wring from their bows
delicately wet sound
reverberating perfectly
in the cochlea of perfect-pitch ears,
refusing resolution.
When you play in Italy, they will hurl their opinions onstage
with rotting fruits and vegetables;
but here, now, you are immersed and lost and safe.
