The Accordionist
A whining chord of warning—the Métro’s version
of Concert A—and we clear the sliding doors.
People take their seats as if assigned.
Some of them open paperbacks, like playbills,
with a formal air of expecting interruption.
Or as if the passengers themselves are actors
in a scene the stage directions might have called
Passengers reading,
so that it scarcely matters
when they turn the page, or even if it’s blank.
Enter a gypsy boy, who lurches forward
carrying an accordion, like a stagehand
awaiting orders where to set it down.
But when the doors wheeze shut, as if by reflex
his accordion too collapses, opens, closes
to the tune of “La Vie en Rose.” He has no shoes.
Unlike the rest of us, dressed soberly
in solid colors, he’s a brazen mess
of hand-me-down, ill-fitting plaids and paisleys.
He’s barely old enough to be skipping school,
but no note of fear or shyness, or of shame,
shadows his face: it was years ago already
somebody taught him how to do this.
To entertain, that is—and in the coin
of the culture: an Edith Piaf song pumped
for all it’s worth from the heartsore instrument
the audience links with soundtracks of old films,
as a loving camera climbs the Eiffel Tower.
But nobody is looking entertained.
They seem to be in some other kind of movie,
more modern, calling for unblinking eyes
(the actor’s oldest trick for coaxing tears)
that no longer lead to tears. No words. Just chords
too grand to be specified. Or is it that?
Blank faces, maybe, standing in for blank
faces, much like wearing basic black.
The boy’s still young enough he plays right through
the next stop—when he might have passed a cup—
and now, with a shrug, he segues crudely to
another chestnut: “Je Ne Regrette Rien.”
My station’s coming up. I start to rummage
furtively in my wallet, held as close
to heart as a hand of cards (of credit cards
luck dealt me); isolate a franc. And stand,
nearly tumbling into him, to drop
the object of my keen deliberation
into the filthy pocket of his jacket,
careful not to touch it. In a second
I stride out from the car to my next scene
on the platform, where I know to exit right
and up the stairs, out to the world of light.
I’ll never see him again.
But some instinct (as the train accelerates
and howls into the tunnel on its pleated
rubber joints, one huge accordion)
tells me to look back—a backward take
on Orpheus, perhaps, in which now only
Eurydice goes free? And fleetingly
I catch through windows of the next three cars
the boy repeated. No, these are his brothers—
each with an accordion in hand
and each boy inches taller than the last—
who handed down to him these blurring clothes,
and yet because the train unreels as fast
as a movie, a single window to a frame,
my eye’s confused, has fused them as one boy
growing unnaturally, an understudy
condemned to play forever underground.
Advent
Wind whistling, as it does
in winter, and I think
nothing of it until
it snaps a shutter off
her bedroom window, spins
it over the roof and down
to crash on the deck in back,
like something out of Oz.
We look up, stunned—then glad
to be safe and have a story,
characters in a fable
we only half-believe.
Look, in my surprise
I somehow split a wall,
the last one in the house
we’re making of gingerbread.
We’ll have to improvise:
prop the two halves forward
like an open double door
and with a tube of icing
cement them to the floor.
Five days until Christmas,
and the house cannot be closed.
When she peers into the cold
interior we’ve exposed,
she half-expects to find
three magi in the manger,
a mother and her child.
She half-expects to read
on tablets of gingerbread
a line or two of Scripture,
as she has every morning
inside a dated shutter
on her Advent calendar.
She takes it from the mantel
and coaxes one fingertip
under the perforation,
as if her future hinges
on not
A whining chord of warning—the Métro’s version
of Concert A—and we clear the sliding doors.
People take their seats as if assigned.
Some of them open paperbacks, like playbills,
with a formal air of expecting interruption.
Or as if the passengers themselves are actors
in a scene the stage directions might have called
Passengers reading,
so that it scarcely matters
when they turn the page, or even if it’s blank.
Enter a gypsy boy, who lurches forward
carrying an accordion, like a stagehand
awaiting orders where to set it down.
But when the doors wheeze shut, as if by reflex
his accordion too collapses, opens, closes
to the tune of “La Vie en Rose.” He has no shoes.
Unlike the rest of us, dressed soberly
in solid colors, he’s a brazen mess
of hand-me-down, ill-fitting plaids and paisleys.
He’s barely old enough to be skipping school,
but no note of fear or shyness, or of shame,
shadows his face: it was years ago already
somebody taught him how to do this.
To entertain, that is—and in the coin
of the culture: an Edith Piaf song pumped
for all it’s worth from the heartsore instrument
the audience links with soundtracks of old films,
as a loving camera climbs the Eiffel Tower.
But nobody is looking entertained.
They seem to be in some other kind of movie,
more modern, calling for unblinking eyes
(the actor’s oldest trick for coaxing tears)
that no longer lead to tears. No words. Just chords
too grand to be specified. Or is it that?
Blank faces, maybe, standing in for blank
faces, much like wearing basic black.
The boy’s still young enough he plays right through
the next stop—when he might have passed a cup—
and now, with a shrug, he segues crudely to
another chestnut: “Je Ne Regrette Rien.”
My station’s coming up. I start to rummage
furtively in my wallet, held as close
to heart as a hand of cards (of credit cards
luck dealt me); isolate a franc. And stand,
nearly tumbling into him, to drop
the object of my keen deliberation
into the filthy pocket of his jacket,
careful not to touch it. In a second
I stride out from the car to my next scene
on the platform, where I know to exit right
and up the stairs, out to the world of light.
I’ll never see him again.
But some instinct (as the train accelerates
and howls into the tunnel on its pleated
rubber joints, one huge accordion)
tells me to look back—a backward take
on Orpheus, perhaps, in which now only
Eurydice goes free? And fleetingly
I catch through windows of the next three cars
the boy repeated. No, these are his brothers—
each with an accordion in hand
and each boy inches taller than the last—
who handed down to him these blurring clothes,
and yet because the train unreels as fast
as a movie, a single window to a frame,
my eye’s confused, has fused them as one boy
growing unnaturally, an understudy
condemned to play forever underground.
Advent
Wind whistling, as it does
in winter, and I think
nothing of it until
it snaps a shutter off
her bedroom window, spins
it over the roof and down
to crash on the deck in back,
like something out of Oz.
We look up, stunned—then glad
to be safe and have a story,
characters in a fable
we only half-believe.
Look, in my surprise
I somehow split a wall,
the last one in the house
we’re making of gingerbread.
We’ll have to improvise:
prop the two halves forward
like an open double door
and with a tube of icing
cement them to the floor.
Five days until Christmas,
and the house cannot be closed.
When she peers into the cold
interior we’ve exposed,
she half-expects to find
three magi in the manger,
a mother and her child.
She half-expects to read
on tablets of gingerbread
a line or two of Scripture,
as she has every morning
inside a dated shutter
on her Advent calendar.
She takes it from the mantel
and coaxes one fingertip
under the perforation,
as if her future hinges
on not
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