SHOSTAKOVICH STRING QUARTETS
selected poetic responses

Shostakovich String Quartet No.3 in F op.73 [summer 1946]

we used to drink tea and talk about the future, remember?
joscha and nadzia would laugh and say so much without using words
just their eyes, remember? isn’t it remarkable how much
stays with us as time rots on...

i thought i heard thunder.
remember how the chickens hated thunder
as much as we hated artillery

this is chambered music
each score is placed in a drawer
upon completion
i won’t even bother
trying to have this stuff
performed or even published
not now
what a peculiar position
to be in
everything we create
is subject to
official interpretation
and i’d rather have
no interpretation
at all
into the drawer
with this entire cycle!

[moderato con moto]

what’s that they’re saying?
christ! haven’t i been a good boy?
they have no idea...now my fiddles will mince around
in secretive tip-toe mincing steps
as if not to cause a ruckus
i’m rubbing my head with both hands
i just want to be left alone
i haven’t done anything wrong [allegro non troppo]

i can see them all commence to dance
when the directors say so
can’t you?

every so often
the current gets switched on
and they all commence to dancing
on their knees

or even in their graves

at least a game on the field is honest:
one kicks the ball either
this way or that
and if we disagree with the way it’s called
we can holler together in protest

[adagio]

but the rest of life seems to be much more irrational
i’ve begun to sign my name to the most ridiculous statements
simply to get them to let me be

there comes a point at which
the natural response consists
of resignation,
to all appearances

you know the saying:
give ‘em the finger
but with your hand
deep down in
your pants pocket[moderato]

yes, moderation.
everything in moderation
especially moderation itself
i had a bit too much to drink
walked through the square to the park
it was very dark
the moon had waned
to nearly nothing up there
comrade stalin
has measured everything out
including insomnia
i have my share

once in the night shadows of the trees
i began to relax and breathe deeply
the vodka was still in my bones
but i felt better able to handle myself

i heard an owl
lit a cigarette
sat down
and rubbed my eyes

slowly the dance returned
in my head

i found myself smiling

but it’s surely that strange smile i’ve cultivated:
one corner up, one down.

my first wife, nina
was a nuclear physicist
she died of the cancer
radiation poisoning

do you really expect for me
to join the party? this
is still the bolshevik party
i’m still not seeing socialism

haven’t seen it yet, have you?
has anyone hereabouts?
has anybody here seen socialism?
i’ve been waiting

[lento]

look at the way
i’m floating
over the surface
of the street

nothing makes me hover in
this disconcerting way, not
touching the ground in spite
of enormous gravitational

pull, nothing does me this
way the way your party does
and always has. can you see
why i never joined? fuck.

[allegro]

here i will scribble my name
and exactly how i feel today
if anyone has to ask what
this means, i am very sorry.

everything means something.
[didn’t mayakovsky say so?]
i cannot put it more clearly.
this one takes not very long.

if you wish to understand
i want you to look for the
diminutive figure whose
feet cannot touch the earth.

wearing a raincoat and
puffing a cigarette, reading
pravda and wincing in the
broad daylight, here i am.

stalin is seven years dead
yet i am subject to his
centrifugal antigravitation
and try as i may

i cannot reach the ground

i was raised in this manner
not by my family but by the
benevolent state i was raised to be

like this

like this

and this

and this like this

like this

torture is terrible
even in your own language
whether they torture you
in german or in russian
or english for that matter
torture in french

it’s still torture
like meyerhold was tortured
or the sustained, more gradual torture
out here like me in the street
torture is torture
even in your own home town

even if you don’t shoot me
behind the ear
my ears still ring
with the essence of shooting
and anyone with conscience
has the same auditory problem

someone is laughing
under the concrete
someone called my name
i’m leaving the square
hands in my pockets
i bit my cigarette in two

spat spat spat
spat on the pavement
but cannot expel
the life my mouth is full
of this kind of a life
cannot spit it out

it has bonded with
the orbitals of my jaws
my palette is painted
with the life i’ve led
the lives we’ve lived
my teeth are ringing with it

my tongue is silent
behind my lips, silent
with witness and mute
with having left itself
immobile during each
segment of my time here

time in our bodies
should be precious
i wanted to savor
every evening
but instead i swallowed
each night, whole

my teeth could not
penetrate the surface
of the night, and
my throat needs must
dilate to allow
the night to slip down

into my stomach
where every honest effort
is made to digest
the night, each hour
every fucking minute
wedged in my guts

see how the string
vibrates to mimic
my gizzard
listen to my gizzard
i have the guts
of a rooster

i wasn’t born this way
the government
performed a transplant
whereby the cock’s gut
was planted inside of me
i have a soviet gizzard

when stalin planted
chicken guts inside
his citizenry
it was to enable us
to peck the ground
and live on scratch

have you seen the rooster
up all night staring
both ways at once
did you know that
insomnia is from
reptilian ancestors of birds?

i become a dragon
breathing smoke at 2 AM
i sit perfectly still
except for ashes falling
and at dawn
hear me cry out!

but when they come
to see who’s generating
all these noises
i am silent and immobile
you’d never know
it was i who had crowed

i crow like a crow
i hide very much like a beetle
the rain collects
in my pockets and nothing
can be resolved
there are no solutions

i sit unblinking
a weary little reptile
a wary little bird
never do i blink
i have swallowed
my own voice

i let it out
through the drawer
where chamber music
waits out the siege
the siege of khrennikov
the siege of brezhnev

my eyeballs crawl
out from behind
my spectacles
my eyeballs
end up perched
up by my cowlick

i am watching
those who are watching
they are watching
but i saw them first
mine eyes never close
i am watching too

i have become a sphinx
i can perch here
longer than lenin, even
longer than lenin
i am perched here
long as you like

like it or not
here i am

goodbye for now

                                                                                     for Ted Harley
                                                                                    arwulf aug 2001
                                                                                    grand marais, michigan, usa
                                                                                    [revised jan 2002]