Mozart and Salieri
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - John Heath-Stubbs
Salieri encountered Mozart;
Took him friendly by the arm,
And smiled a thin-lipped ambiguous smile.
This was Italian charm.
Mozart observed the smile of Salieri
But was not enough observant,
(For the Angel of Death had called already
In the guise of an upper servant).
Maestro, said Salieri, Dear Maestro,
It is happy that we met.
(We'll end this sharp boy's tricks, he thought
He'll not get by - not yet!)
And as for that post of kapellmeister
We'll do what we can do.
But something black within him whispered:
He is greater, is greater than you.
He is great enough to oust you, one day,
And take your place at Court.
(Not if Salieri is Salieri,
Salieri thought.)
It is happy that we met, said Salieri
I wish I could ask you to dine -
But I have, alas, a pressing engagement.
You will stay for a glass of wine?
No one carried Mozart to nobody's grave
And the skies were glazed and dim
With a spatter of out-of-season rain
(Or the tears of the Seraphim).
Then two stern angels stood by that grave
Saying Infidel, Freemason,
We are taking your soul where it willed to be judged
At the throne of Ultimate Reason.
But the Queen of the Night in coloratura
Horrors trilled at the sun,
For she looked at the soul of Wolfgang Amadeus
And she knew she had not won.
They lifted that soul where the great musicians
In contrapuntal fires
Through unlimited heavens of order and energy
Augment the supernal choirs.
And the spirit of Johann Sebastian, harrowed
With abstract darts of love,
Escorted the terrible child Mozart
Through courteous mansions above.
And hundred-fisted Handel erected
Great baroque arches of song
As the Cherubim and the Seraphim
Bandied Mozart along.
But Mozart looked back again in compassion
Below the vault of the stars
To where the body of Beethoven battered
Its soul against the prison bars.
Successful Salieri lay dying -
But now his reason was gone -
In a chamber well-fitted with Louis Seize furniture,
But dying, dying alone.
Then two small devils, like surpliced choirboys,
Like salamanders in black and red,
Extracted themselves from the fluttering firelight
And stood beside the bed.
And they sang to him then in two-part harmony,
With their little, eunechoid voices:
You have a pressing engagement, Salieri,
In the place of no more choices.
So they hauled down his soul and put it away
In a little cushioned cell
With stereophonic gramaphones built into the walls -
And he knew that this must be Hell.
Salieri sat there under the chandeliers
(But never the sun or the moon)
With nothing to listen to from eternity to eternity
But his own little tinkling tunes.
