Das Gift

He simply thought that it would be more meaningful to think a certain way, 
To challenge thoughts, rebellions, repercussions, his reactionary days, 
A world quite unlike another where monogamy falls dead, heaping perils, 
Love to show its colours, a coterie of handsome exploits, dangerous decisions, 
Paint a scene of aeroplanes and dilettantes, uprooting, see the world, 
Possibilities and enervation, liberation, a pattering of petty ways percussive, 
Just as his art comes hammering, unalloyed, a pedalled note of stringing sounds, 
Violins, upholding, cellos, base sonatas, carnations and chrysanthemums:
“I must compose a piece — a metaphor for you — God help me Ruth!” 

Ruthie rests, a ruby dress, imagination trapped between a pillory of yore, 
A quill and ink, cheeks burgundy, candelabra scintillates, a splotch,
Laced handkerchiefs and muddied blinks await her pianist’s chord; 
In the drawing room a cat, pitch black, meowing echoes through the hall, 
The girl jumps, the inkwell starts, a puddle of unwritten thoughts; Pushkin, 
Quite alone, deplores that doomed departure of his master, had always promised
His return to the authorial namesake and his femme, griefstricken Ruth —
Whistles heard throughout the concert hall that night he said he must away, 
And she had thought him true, an absence extempore, an improvisation
Just as those pianoed chords he used to play, meant only for her; 
They ring throughout Vienna’s stages, Paris, Prague, New York. 

His tophat rests beside the fireplace, the glow of timber trapped in his own past, 
A set of disembodied amber breasts, unlike her own, his suck, his bite, 
Timbre gushing through a tune, a volatile execution of a Debussy, 
Now back onstage, his finger slips, an orchestral work by Mussorgsky, 
And he had never heard the Russian screech — another blond wakes up in his bed, 
A Serbian, some ten years older than the last, basking in his effeminate fame:
“My Julian, another nocturne play for me!” He takes up his baton, a slap upon her ass,
He speaks, “That is enough, I bid you go.” She falters, unamused, decision tame, 
Yet frenzied gaze; a pillow strewn upon the floor conceals a pair of purple panties: 
She takes his wrist, a gasp, swift shuffling, the room he quick evacuates. 

Two Januaries ago he had held onto her hand, reciting Hegel, Heidegger, 
Cooped up in the library, the world spirit possessed by one Onegin: 
“Ruth, let’s get a cat.” An excursion to the shelter, teal eyes aglow, 
He promised he should write to her from Amsterdam, Jerusalem, Ontario, 
Ashes from that only correspondence hidden in a copy of an antiquated Henry James,  
Asked her to burn for his own protection, and who was she to wonder of his ways, 
“He cannot bear to have a mindset preëstablished rigid ideology governing his claims,
And who am I to place restrictions on a soul I promised once I would set free?”
Ruthie weeps. The cat has crept up to the drawing room, tail brushes up against her thighs; 
She recalls his fingers at the soirée feeling up her legs beneath a tablecloth opaque, 
Her moans, his kiss, her vows, his emptied promises, her innocence, escape. 

He downs another whiskey, writes another chord, the waiter vacillates, 
“A port, garçon, and quickly, I haven’t one more note to waste!” 
“You are the famous Monsieur Julian?” A lady in his place, brunette, 
Stands coyly in her ruby dress, a memory lines the young man’s mind, but soon
Evaporates. He nods at once, another pair of petite undefiled breasts, yet he is bored:
“Garçon, the bill!” The lady’s glance upon the billiards table, upright piano in the corner. 
“But sir, a prelude is in order, do you not think?” Lady’s request met with a spank. “Dear sir!” 
His departure to the plane, a concert he must play, return to the United States. 

“You see, he promised he would write to me, but I have heard, of late, of an affair…” 
“You’ve not seen him in months, give him a break, he lives a libertine, and you,” Aurora speaks,
“A proper lady, made to be his slave! Dear Ruth, it is absurd. And him you never wed!
I’ve met another fellow, twenty-nine; he writes, he claims — you know, it’s possible to find love
Again.” Ruthie’s eyes blaze steel, sends her sister, dear companion, away, sits with the cat, 
Extracts a record from his old collection, Transfigured Night, the string sextet, 
Powdered cheeks and curled locks, blotchy eyes and trembling lips, a perfume bottle
Stands amongst the bric-à-brac; Schoenberg still sane, serialism uninvented yet, 
In Vienna Wagner was of late revered, before his Nazi days, and Julian —
Dear Julian, before his experimental plays, his body precious, to her exclusive!

Tobacco breath accosts a violinist of nineteen, black overcoat, a scarf, delicious sheen, 
A bittersweet cologne from his Ruthied days he swore he’d never use again,
But now to think of her alone with the cat, petrifying vision, her hairless cunt exposed, 
Legs dripping with desire, he comes at her now from behind, bushy Jewish hair splayed
Across her face, lips bulbous with a kiss, her sheets stained milky white — if only her to see again! 
But with her restraints Lothario becomes only insane — this girl must do, just for this night, 
Takes her back to the hotel, performs another jaded prelude, this one too chaste, a grand mistake
At once he can correct; the scarf another purpose plays, blinded now her sight, her sonorous sighs
Delicate, the notes he has her play upon her fiddle, standing ashamed, a drag, this one,
Traditional, trapped between the pillars of sobriety, society — “Shall you have a scotch?”
She takes her case and runs away, a call-girl to replace her daze — another prick misunderstood! 

Aurora with a brash idea rushes toward the drawing-room, Ruth prescribed a pair of
Reading glasses premature, genetic disfigurement of cornea, the frames upon her forehead rest,
Greets her with a second’s heart’s arrest: “What now, I say? Surely, you haven’t come again to take my
Hopes away? You have read the papers, lately. Don’t greet me with oblivious oration. They say, 
His career has given way to auditoriums around the world. You would have never thought up his return!” 
The gazette her sister snatches, censorious countenance displayed. “Surely you cannot think…!”
“Perhaps he’ll want to see the cat.” Pushkin purrs upon her lap, an aversion not immediately portrayed. 
“Ruth, darling, you’ll be disgraced! Now come, I’ve met the most wondrous composer on the telephone!”
Her sister plays the hypocrite, newfangled ways, an innovation she herself refuses to uphold, 
The wires they can tap, yet the letters she can burn, erasure of memories, the time they traipsed together
Through the garden, and she recounting wishes of forever, his assent too automatic to be true. 

A measuring stick he fingers at the drugstore, an invention Euclidian, quotidian, 
Yet he knows how well to have his fun. A pair of sea-blue eyes he meets behind the register, 
Coin purse buried in his pockets, a glassy flask of smuggled chloral, pocketknife, a key, 
Change he tenders, slips the whore his card, another maid cannot resist, 
This one too fat, cheap garments just a size too big, she is dismissed, 
Whistles his dispassion in the tune of his latest trio for piano, flute, and violin, 
To be premiered at Carnegie, upon arrival in his Manhattan, native and nostalgic, 
New York city lights, his eyes bedazzled, Central Park and college days
He used to spend parading with his Ruth, but she could never live up to his philosophy. 

In the Ritz she rents a room, repudiation of Aurora’s riff of warnings that she and he
Should meet during his weeklong stay, yet she for him precisely could not give a whit, 
Or so she her mind convinces as the concierge takes up her portmanteau, stares at the cat
Who gives a hiss at this unfamiliarity, her room nineteen hundred twenty-six, a year a number
She too young to properly remember, yet how wonderful must it have been before the world’s
Degeneration! “Apologies, kind sir, the cat can sense the decadence throughout the halls.”
The bellboy drops off her valise, rushes off offended, she too blunt for her own good, 
Remnants of her Julian days, who always did say what was on his mind — but Julian? 
A shadow merges with the closing elevator doors. Him it cannot be. It has been years, of course.
Her memory gives way. He descends two floors, on his mind his Ruthie’s gaze, 
Second only to this receptionist he has waiting naked in his room, lascivious, ablaze. 

Three days, and it is time for the poor boy to make his way down fifty-ninth, 
His newly lacquered shoes clack upon the pavement, on his arms a prostitute, 
The prettiest one that he could find willing to sit aroused to the tune of violins and flutes, 
The ruler on occasion he withdraws during their short walk, she his recurring flame, 
Red velvet seats, the front row seethes, tickets scattered on the floor, the pianist gives an A, 
Ruth rushes in, her ruby dress, heels racing past the carpeting upon the floor, and him she spots,
Head thrown back as the pianist slams an opening chord, vertiginous, subliminal, yet he is bored,
Her place in the second row, feels miles away from the times they sat in all those halls together,
His fingers sensually caressing her kneecaps, and she awaits — impossible to recreate!
The piece is deemed alarming by the critics, yet what know they of his aesthetics?

Another headline in the gazette delivered daily to her chambers, another feature on her Julian
She tosses it aside, what more should she want to hear of his celebrity when celibate he cannot
Remain for even just a minute, frustration wells up deep inside, her scheme him to reclaim
Abortive, yet all along she knew of his escapades. She sits with the cat alone. The fireplace defunct, 
Perfumes the room with his own favourite scent to mask a rancour, putrid smell, 
All in her mind, of course, her allergies act up again, but it is not the cat — 
"Oh Pushkin, don’t destroy the papers, please, I know I must resist, but I must know the latest
Of his indecent ways! What did he call his newest piece? ‘Structures sedated slowly into
Nonexistence’ — Was not that what the critics raved? Chloral Hydrate. The man’s been dabbling
In some chemistry, of course, he thinks to expand his worldview, unrestraint…” She snatches up
The paper, the front page the odd obituary, some unimportant chap, experimentation gone astray — 
She wavers, pages flutter to the floor, Pushkin she takes up, retreats to her study, another day.