POEMS/ Rehearsal: Bach's Cantata 119 by Phyllis Beck Katz
Rehearsal: Bach’s Cantata 119
That day when the conductor abruptly put down her baton,
the music stopped suddenly in the middle of a bass aria,
gray-haired musicians arrested still as statues,
bows raised, lips close to mouth-pieces, fingers poised
above piano keys, singers’ scores open and held high.
They watched as the conductor reached the tenor
slumped in his chair, and softly touched his hand,
saw him lift his head trying to smile through lips bleached
as white as the aureole of hair that crowned his head,
heard someone whisper call 911, another quickly rise to phone.
In silence, they sat and watched the tenor’s wife, so skilled
at coaxing arpeggios and trills from horn and oboe, speak softly
to her husband and begin to pack her instruments, her reeds and music.
I could taste the fear in the room. Then, someone said
let’s play, and the conductor pick up her baton, the musicians
opened their music, and Bach’s aria rose and fell in intricate
counterpoint—Jerusalem and its promise claimed us once again.
This poem appears in Migrations (Antrim House, 2013)
That day when the conductor abruptly put down her baton,
the music stopped suddenly in the middle of a bass aria,
gray-haired musicians arrested still as statues,
bows raised, lips close to mouth-pieces, fingers poised
above piano keys, singers’ scores open and held high.
They watched as the conductor reached the tenor
slumped in his chair, and softly touched his hand,
saw him lift his head trying to smile through lips bleached
as white as the aureole of hair that crowned his head,
heard someone whisper call 911, another quickly rise to phone.
In silence, they sat and watched the tenor’s wife, so skilled
at coaxing arpeggios and trills from horn and oboe, speak softly
to her husband and begin to pack her instruments, her reeds and music.
I could taste the fear in the room. Then, someone said
let’s play, and the conductor pick up her baton, the musicians
opened their music, and Bach’s aria rose and fell in intricate
counterpoint—Jerusalem and its promise claimed us once again.
This poem appears in Migrations (Antrim House, 2013)