callas lover

BY D.A. POWELL

this is the track I've had on REPEAT all afternoon: she is butterfly

brilliant riband, rice flour face, silken, even her voice a sashed kimono

if I were foolish like her:

but aren't I foolish like her

spotting the coil of smoke and the billowed sail

against the verge of sky

simple on the rise surveying the anchorage: simple me, signal me

dreading the confident assumption of return, dreading more

uncertain tone to come, the thinning notes, performance

too close to my own impatient—swells, a surge: sick wind

but the emotion is, after all, an artfully conjured gesture

arranged marriage between a past ache and frail woodwinds

I could skip ahead

could break the inconsolable loop

of harbor, waiting, overlook, waiting, inevitable waning eye

troubled robins, once more in the handkerchief trees

once more, brief aquarelle of triplet lilies, blue as willowware

in that interval before his embrace falters, stuck, founders

[shuffle play] such a pitch of tenderness in the voice

such an awful lot of noise