JOHNMICHAEL SIMON POETRY

I am listening to Joseph Szigety

playing the violin concerto of Sergei Prokofiev

conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham

and recorded in 1935

three years before I was born

 

The compère is Ram Evron

who died a year ago

 

I close my eyes in pleasure

Szigety, his flying bow and strings, is in the room

Beecham, his white goatee and fat Havana, is in the room

Prokofiev who died in 1953 is in the room

Evron, his soothing baritone, is in the room

 

Only I am not in the room

 

I am flying down the streets of time

like a flock of birds

to the nesting ground

a huge amphitheater under the stars

where all the music ever composed

was conceived and lives on forever

 

In the ears of children

queuing in endless strings of octaves

to be born