Renee Fleming sang Handel, Brahms, Straus, Dvorak and other famous
composers. To me the most moving was from a modern composer (also a
violinist) named Caroline Shaw (B. 1982) who works with Kanye West.
The text is by Mary Jo Salter (B. 1954) and it brought me to tears.
Bed of Letters
Propped like a capital
letter at the head
of what was once our bed,
or like a letterhead -
as if your old address
were printed on my face -
I'm writing you this note
folded in sheets you lay
on them, but sleeplessly
night after night, a man
whose life became about
the fear of being found out.
Rarely a cross word
between us, although today
I see the printer's tray
of your brain, the dormant type
sorted in little rooms
to furnish anagrams,
fresh headlines, infinite
new stories in nice fonts.
Give her what she wants,
you must have thought, and brought
home seedlings to transplant
in flower beds, unmeant
to bloom into such tall
tales ~ which even you
can't unsay or undo.
And yet it's true that long
ago, two lovers dozed
naked and enclosed
one history between covers,
We woke and, shy and proud,
read our new poems aloud.
