The sixth section of Geranium Lake comprises poems inspired by or describing music. This poem, a villanelle, considers the first composition, a minuet and trio in the key of G Major, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who, it is said, was only five years old when he composed it. This poem employs the music inherent in a strict pattern of rhyme and meter and repeated lines to suggest the restraint and repetition of classical music. You can hear the piece by young Mozart HERE (be sure to scroll down to the YouTube video cued by the photograph of hands on a keyboard.)
“Mozart at Age Five: Koëchel #1” was first published in the journal Mezzo Cammin in the summer of 2015.
Mozart: Koëchel #1 So complete, this deft-handed beginning: delicate but assured. Fine bones. Precise but varied as the world’s spinning. You can smell ambition. He’s keen on pinning down those faint, celestial tones. Quite complete, his deft-handed beginning. Young gambler, he’s intent on winning applause and love, those polished stones, pretty and varied as the world’s spinning. The music of the spheres bows to him, keening– harpsichord anticipates trombones. So complete, this deft-handed beginning. Composers know each note means re-beginning, borrowing what one never owns, precise but varied as the earth’s spinning. Like ladders, in his dreams come patterns leaning– he dreams up sonic lattices and cones. So completes this deft-handed beginning, precise but varied as the world’s spinning.
Wishing you happy memories of your own early creativity, LESLIE
It cannot have been easy for him to be such a prodigy, but the world is certainly the richer for his presence here.
Not sure I’ve read this poem before! Wonderful. Makes me think of Mozart a little differently. And, I particularly like this line:
He’s keen on pinning
down those faint, celestial tones.
Just beautiful!