Music For a While
Mark Jarman
Hate took him by surprise,
The statues of snarling dogs
On the gate, the gatehouse gargoyles,
And after the dull long drive
Through bare potato fields,
The monstrous building, a stucco
Hedgehog of bristling chimneys
And mildewed statuary.
On the final gate, paired lions,
Or creatures that looked like lions
(Rain had eaten their faces),
Tore apart their prey.
Simple enough to hate
Ugliness, but his hate
Was not aesthetic. He simply
Hated and saw hate transformed
Into banners of crows and pigeons
Whirling from battlements,
Into moss tufting the slates.
And he had come to visit
And with his wife “perform”
For Southern Indianans
Who found this part of England
Just like Indiana.
But how could he hate that place,
The long-escaped from prison,
Now in Lincolnshire?
Poor Southern Indiana
To have such negative energy
Burning in its direction
And searing all its works,
Including this purchased manor,
Late Regency, now a college,
Built to house a collection
Of art, now commemorated
By cracking reproductions.
Carved on the garden stairs
Dogs bared their fangs at snakes
Coiled around chubby infants.
When the haughty administrator
Threw open the President’s suite
And the beelzebubbing flies
Throbbed with rage at the windows,
Filthy with streaming sunlight—
“The sunlight brings them out,”
She said, as if proud of them.
“I think they breed in the wood.”—
He had to take a walk.
Beyond a field he looked back.
The afternoon sun brought out
A pinkness in the finish
Of the still hideous building.
And the village that had known it
For over a century
Turned its back behind him,
The tower of its ancient kirk
A slate-gray Norman dagger.
When he took his pocket change
In one hand to fling it like seed,
And the contents of his wallet—
He knew he had to go back.
His hate had reached its fullest
Flowering. And the past,
Which was Southern Indiana,
Had to be forgiven.
He didn’t know that exactly.
But he knew he had to go back,
Back to the ugly pink pile
Across the black bare fields
Where potatoes had been dug up,
Back to dress beside his wife
And rise to their occasion.
She would sing Purcell.
Music for awhile
Shall all your cares beguile:
Wondering how your pains were eas’d
And disdaining to be pleas’d
Till Alecto free the dead
From their eternal bands,
Till the snakes drop from her head
And the whip from out her hands.
And he would go through the motions
After her, and give pleasure,
Perhaps, without caring.
He mounted the central stairs,
A dim and musty air shaft
Up through the heart of the house,
Among shadows of gilded plaster
And the chill of marble niches,
When a body thrust against him
With an adolescent gesture,
Flippant and defiant,
An elbow bone in his side,
And a snarl, which he heard
Himself repeat. In their face-off,
He recognized the ghost.
They spoke with a single voice
And said each other’s names
And admitted, for the sake
Of brevity and darkness,
That this assault was based
On an old unanswered wounding,
For hatred has many sores
And scores to settle. This one
Was for mediocrity,
The nagging ache of a past
In a place just barely escaped
And not without its mark.
Later, hearing the singing,
His wife’s voice rising and dropping
Away as she held the notes,
Climbing Purcell’s invisible
Victory over the fury
With its gorgon hair and its scourge;
Later, hearing the singing,
His struggle on the stair
Would find in memory
The blank niche it deserved.
Hearing her sing as if light
And air were her audience,
He would admit that ghost
Was his permanent attendant,
Waiting to make him burn
With all its recompensing
Lashes—resentment, spite,
Bitter recollection.
He could be sung into light
And spared for the moment of singing,
But Alecto would return.
The mystery was his need
To hear the approaching hiss.
But now, he would be ready.
