A Note on Glass
Fools write you off as just repetition.
Life is repetition and you are life.
The blue-green planet spins in rhythm
with your whirling dervish arpeggios.
You soundtrack my downtown schlep
Essex becomes the River Styx.
I keep a quarter for a monocle to pay my dues.
This non-diegetic cue rouses the hairs
On the neck of my soul.
I am firmly rooted in the present
A terra-cotta pot soaking in the rippling streams
and babbling brooks of Philip Glass’
glass half full joie de vivre.
The detail on permanent vacation in my synapses—no,
Not the cab driving story or the moving business he ran with Reich—
is the only part I remember from the doc. Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve
Parts. His wife at the time (no idea if they’re still together) said he was
Just like a kid.
I didn’t need her to
Suggest boyishness;
I know it when I hear it.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
Ostinato? No.
Nor ostentatious.
He makes me like lachrymose Niobe
with simple phrases he weaves in and out
with the verve of a bird building a home,
lost in the pleasure of song.