Playing Cards with Poulenc

‘Manic-depressive’ would be the old term; up one

minute, down the next – the source of the tussle

in his Gloria, as it veers from riotous to reverential.

Or was it inspired as he claimed by a combination

of Gozzoli's frescoes of angels, tongues sticking out,

and the Benedictine monks he watched playing football?

A pointer to his mood-swings: when out for a stroll

he’d turn his hat-brim up or down to inform passers-by

whether he wanted to chat or be left alone. Some saw this

as attention-seeking: what's more important – the way

you look at the world, or the way the world looks at you?

Perhaps part of a wider pattern: as Prokofiev's partner

at the bridge table did his bids betray his frame of mind;

hearts and diamonds for joy, black suits for depression?

When after a separation of twenty years Prokofiev died,

Poulenc began an oboe sonata in memory of the friend

who had once urged him to enter a bridge contest,

the prize dwarfing anything he was likely to earn

from musical composition. A further decade gone

prior to its completion, its première was delayed

until after his own death – the last card Fate dealt him.

STEWART CONN