Brahms Peruses the Score of Siegfried

Enormous boots, thick-soled, elastic-sided,

Rest on a carpet shaggy as the pelt

Of a mountain beast – perhaps

Is precisely a mountain beast.

The chair adjoining, being unoccupied,

Reveals its antimacassar of scalloped lace

Like the lower half

Of a bikini of our day.

The frock-coat is disposed in folds as ample

As those of saints’ robes in Renaissance painting:

The pants, large cylinders

Of a more recent art.

The background is a dark and shining wealth

Of gilt-tooled books, mahogany, and frames

For photographs – for this,

Eventually, no doubt.

The peering old man holds the little score so close

His white beard sweeps the page; but gives no sign

That he perceives – or smells –

Anything untoward.

He could not be expected to be thinking

That the legend of courage, kiss and sword arose

From those atrocious Huns

Who ruined an empire's comfort.

But how can he not be falling back aghast

At the chromatic spectrum of decay,

Starting to destroy already

His classical universe?

ROY FULLER

A Brahms Intermezzo

The heart is a minor artist

hiding behind a beard.

In middle age

the bloodstream becomes a hammock

slowing down for silence –

till then, this lullaby,

arpeggiated thunder

and the streams running

through Arcadia. I, too,

says the black-browed creature

am in this vale of sweetness,

my notes are added to eternity.

PETER PORTER

From Brahms in Thun

His hand moves over the page like a flock of birds

Seeking rest in snow, their tracks a relic

Of the enduring passage of a hunger

Across an infinite waste, a fragile heartbeat,

The Stockhorn, Niesen, and the Blümlisalp,

At once forbidding and familiar.

Quick, catch their flight … The hand continues to move,

The quavers swarm, the sheets fall from the piano,

The rhythms fight it out, the prey's in sight,

Crisp noble chords, the strings making decisions

That their invisible fingers lead them to,

The next idea that lies in wait for them.

The only respite is a dark Kaffee.

The ritual itself is stimulating:

His brass pot from Vienna with its spigot;

Its porcelain stand; the little burner moving

Its blue flame like a crocus underneath;

The grinding of the Mokka from Marseilles.