Poem: Marcello's Lament

From the book Interplay: Finding the Keys to Creativity

 

“The story is the ballet.
Otherwise, it would all
just be a bunch of steps.”

      --Karen Gabay, ballerina

Marcello’s Lament

Starving baritone finds the stone on a

black sand beach covered in driftwood

(If I said the wood was white as bones

I would be giving it away.)

He kneels on the sand where the

ocean comes through the rocks

and reaches into the ribs of a burnt-out cello

plowing a pyramid of blackened

chars until he fingers the edges of its

mineral heart and

pulls it into the sun.

(If I said it was as red as Betelgeuse

I would be lying.)

The stone is a jealous stone

it takes away his lovers

takes away his sleep

leaves his pockets thin and sallow

She is Musetta

the woman you cannot have

but if you hold her to your ear she will

sing you bright waltzes and

turn her lollipop eyes at you across the café.

But the song and the glance are not enough,

so Marcello takes the stone and grinds it up,

spreads it across his Sunday salad

(If I said the dressing was

Roquefort I would be saying too much.)

The fragments trunkle their way through his

veins and gather at the aorta,

pressing northward to make his heart skip

on nights when Artemis falls awry and

mountainside lanterns burst like

meteors through the Paris streets.

Years after Mimi’s last breath

he comes back to the sea to bare his

skin to the inkwell sky and

wait for Orion’s belt to burn him down,

leaving a coal as red as Betelgeuse

for the timpani waves to steam away.           

First published in Eclectic Literary Forum

Photo by MJV