Matthews, "Va, Pensiero"

When Verdi lay dying, the Milanese
scattered straw for blocks around his house
to muffle the clatter of horses
so the Maestro could easily cede

his breath, piano, no more fuss than that.
Someone reading across the room looked up:
the silence had gone slack.  Soon enough,
as I thought when my father was first dead,

the consolations will begin.  Time now
to spurn all balms, to hold up like a glass
of wine (Libiamo!) the malice
I hoarded, the blessings I held in my mouth

like spit, the spite I burned for fuel.
Who snarls across the stage with a drawn sword;
who gives and then defiles his or her word,
unless it’s me, or you?  And we can’t use

it, ever, what we didn’t spend.
Now consolations means something.
And so three massed choirs poise to sing
Va, pensiero in February, 1901.

Their visible, blobbed breath rose like a ghost
above the flower-barnacled coffin.
Fly, thought, the hymn begins, and like a falcon
thought goes, and like a falcon thought comes home.


William Matthews

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