A Poem For Today - Honda Pavarotti

[KEN DICKINSON]



For our very own Kurt Heyl who becomes an octogenarian today. I hope you get your trombone out for this one Kurt.

Honda Pavarotti

I'm driving on the dark highway

when the opera singer on the radio

opens his great mouth

and the whole car plunges down the canyon of his throat.

So the night becomes an aria of stars and exit signs

as I steer through the galleries

of one dilated Italian syllable

after another. I love the passages in which

the rich flood of the baritone

strains out against the walls of the esophagus,

and I love the pauses

in which I hear the tenor's flesh labor to inhale

enough oxygen to take the next plummet

up into the chasm of the violins.

In part of the song, it sounds as if the singer

is being squeezed by an enormous pair of tongs

while his head and legs keep kicking.

In part of the song, it sounds as if he is

standing in the middle of a coliseum,

swinging a 300-pound lion by the tail,

the empire of gravity

conquered by the empire of aerodynamics,

the citadel of pride in flames

and the citizens of weakness

celebrating their defeat in chorus,

joy and suffering made one at last,

joined in everything a marriage is alleged to be,

though I know the woman he is singing for

is dead in a foreign language on the stage beside him,

though I know his chain mail is made of silver-painted plastic

and his mismanagement of money is legendary,

as I know I have squandered

most of my own life

in a haze of trivial distractions,

and that I will continue to waste it.

But wherever I was going, I don't care anymore,

because no place I could arrive at

is good enough for this, this thing made out of experience

but to which experience will never measure up.

And that dark and soaring fact

is enough to make me renounce the whole world

or fall in love with it forever.

  - Tony Hoagland

[David Glick]

Congratulations, Kurt, on your octogenarian achievement and many thanks to you and Ken for this fabulous and immensely creative poem by Tony Hoagland. I felt like I took the entire journey with the author.

Best, David

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[Karen Rohn]

Congratulations Kurt. I hope you have a very lovely day... I imagine the cake doesn't have 80 candles burning away but I can easily imagine you swinging a lion around your head with overflowing laughter and Tony in a corner immensely enjoying everything. 

A very big hug and kiss

Karen

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