Diary of One Who Disappeared

Janáček JW 5/12

This piece for solo voice

and piano: both have turned

their backs to the window

I unlocked earlier

to let a cool breeze in

for this young audience

as they follow the music

up and down. The window

opens onto an alley

that travels a few yards

to a murmur of traffic

on Brent Street. Some of us

(the least attentive)

catch sight of shoppers

strolling past or pick out

scraps of passing talk

till a grey, untidy head

comes to a halt outside.

Thin-lipped, she blankly

stares at neither singer

nor seated pianist …

Nor does she fix her gaze

on faces around the room.

Outside, a breath of wind

stirs, then slips across

the sill to lift a sheet

of music from its stand.

Just in time, the singer’s

quick professional hand

sets it back in place.

And still, her steady head

in silence is inclined

to the kind of pleasures

sad music affords. Then

‘Bravo!’ in a hoarse,

thick accent she calls,

as soon sinks from sight

reappears – her raised hand

crossing the window-sill –

she introduces a yellow

flower she has plucked

from the foot of the wall.

She calls again ‘Bravo!’

and my eyes are shut

to see desolate streets,

neighbourhoods failed,

find kicked-in doorways

left open to the rain,

track her disappeared

into camps and ditches,

the lucky scattering

where their journey slows

to this pedal-note of

idling cars, these brown,

pallid and olive faces,

this sunlit afternoon

in this English town,

these peremptory gifts

from one already gone.

MARTYN CRUCEFIX

On a Farm Track, Northumberland

It saw us coming, our barn owl,

took off in a shock

of buff-white splayed feathers

into the wood, into the mist,

into our memory,

whereas Leoš Janáček,

on that overgrown path of his

observed, for long enough, one

that, by the grace of his music,

has not flown away and never will.

Strange, how he caught what he caught

on the touch of a piano

that touches something, leaves me

wondering what of the barn owl's being

made him say it that way.