Monday, September 30, 2013

B.Z. Niditch- Three Poems

PLAYING IN BUDAPEST CAFE

The clock goes off, 2010
in my cold Budapest room
at the Autumnal Equinox
I'm late as usual
for my rehearsal
of Bartok's sonata in C
at the Budapest Cafe
without excuse
knowing this music
pierced my sleepwalking
rush downstairs
with a strudel in hand
comb the river
with a cool breeze
by quivering hilly trees
on my tucked out shirt
bells turn up from roofs
where at first light
a cyan blue sky serves
us another color
of unconsumed sunshine
feeling like a third horseman
holding my violin case
sonata notes and rosin bag
close to the poet
Atilla Jozsef's statue
suddenly recalling
as if in a mirrored epiphany
in another world
a critic who telling us
the trio we practiced
underwritten by Szigeti
was influenced
by Benny Goodman
when jazz modulated
our composer's music.



KEROUAC'S COT

After your reading
you told us of finding
love beads
in San Francisco
under a bed
of a flop house cot
where Kerouac slept
after doing imitations
with a bounty hunter
from New Orleans
floored by the piano
at door stop time
playing Ravel
for the left hand
after the last war,
punch drunk
after Mardi Gras
in the fever of words
by a no exit sign
which shaped you
in your lost and found
life of a poet
catching a chill
from the Bay rains
in your sleeping bag
half opened
with the hands
of a blanket angel
wanting a juice
from every bar
of brawling justice
by the other side
of the road.



ANCHORED

Weighed down by first light
of the sun on the sister river
flowing its scales on waves,
the sea whirred on winds
along weeds and dunes
and dawn's helpless waters
and here on my roped kayak
by crags Fall's enigmas
anchored for my early voyage
amid orange's once tall trees
resembling a Cezanne print
here finding sea shells
is my pleasure
to kneel  on the shore
and gather white shells
from one 's wet fingers
just for a moment's perfection
without worry yet feeling
like Melville or Conrad
on his meanderings
without a history,only exile.

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