Texts: music written to order, strona 1

after a dream

You must change your life fourteen times.
Change your way of living like writing.
You must change your method and your mind.
You have to transform life fourteen times.

Change life. It has become necessary to change your life.
You need this change. We need to change your life.
And now you'd better change it: you, yourself.
It's up to you to change your life. Change, change!

Alter your life, patch and reshape your life.
‘A change come o'er the spirit of your change’.
You might shuffle the cards spin wheels change wheels.

You must convert resolve revolutionize your dissolves.
You might change life itself. And you might change.
You must change. You must not outlive your life.

(in: House (Blown Apart), p. 28)

*this title alludes to Rilke's poem Archaic Torso of Apollo

**the poem formally resembles a sonnet even though it doesn't rhyme

When Bach lay in prison
He could see the fugues in flight
Each necessary note
Converged in an immense (lack of) mercy

When Bach lay in death’s double bonds
He cried God is insensitive
He is irresponsible!
To the rotten ornament that was the world –

When Bach slept in the hospital*
He could not stop seeing the ignoble voices
He could see his children out simplifying
Old Bach remembered his opponent refusing to play at all

When Bach lay imprisoned and improvising in the dark
He remembered each of his enemies and begged God not to
Forgive them

Copyright ©: David Shapiro

(In: In Memory of an Angel, p. 60, 2017)

This poem could pass for a sonnet - if it rhymed and if it was less irregular...

*Bach underwent a cataract surgery which, performed without due diligence, led to his death.