Sandstone Press

Sonnets to Mozart (9)

Posted by RLD on 6th September 2010

This group of poems is dedicated in gratitude and appreciation to the composer William Gilmour. Searching around for a theme I once noticed the scores of a number of Mozart’s piano sonatas resting in the back of his car. It happens that I like this music too, although the notion of me playing it is just an impossible dream. What better linkage to Willie though, who can and does? This led to a consideration not only of Mozart’s music but also his titles and K numbers. What might rise from a concentrated, meditative focus? It turned out to be an appreciation of the shared Dunbeath Water creation process, Paul Gallico’s story,The Snow Goose, whose themes of suffering and sacrifice strike me as pagan and Celtic rather than Christian, new beginnings, memories of my own boyhood in Glasgow, a quote from C.S. Lewis that has never left me, that grief feels like “waiting; just hanging about for something to happen. It gives life a permanently provisional feeling.” Love, sex and death all take their bows, as would be expected. That damned ferryman appears again. My mother used to say, “There’s no show without Punch”, and that takes us back to Rhayader and his spirit bird.’ Now also remembering Edwin Morgan.

A Little Night Music

Halted in the street she spoke from shadow
She’d had enough of all my drunken ways.
If I was drinking she’d go home alone.
That was final – she had no more to say.
I said I didn’t have a toss to give.
All around were ready other lovers
Younger slimmer women, more submissive.
Women who enjoy a sense of humour…
She stopped me with a tiny tinkling laugh.
Oh sure, I might get off with some old bat,
Some ancient frame of skin, bone and gristle.
Few women could go past my wobbly arse
And fewer still resist my hairy fat.
She left me with a low mocking whistle.

Serenade in G Major ‘Eine Kleine Nachtmusik’, K525