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      August 28, 2010BerliozLee Sharkey

      Now let us praise Hector Berlioz
      who found himself one night composing
      a symphony as he slept who woke
      lucid remembering the entire
      first movement in A minor he could
      have sat down at his desk and begun
      transcribing as during the first hours
      after a great destruction we see
      in detail each small thing that was lost
      as after my house went up in flames
      carrying with them all of my poems
      I sat on a mattress on a cold
      floor and began to reconstruct them
      found I could remember all of them
      if only the night were long enough
      but Berlioz willed himself not to
      pick up his pen his wife was ill if
      he wrote the first notes he knew himself
      too well for months nothing would exist
      except poured silver he would not write
      the articles that sustained them how
      would he pay for her medicine how
      would he buy food he willed himself not
      to pick up the pen yet the next night
      the symphony visited him once
      more it called him to service it called
      him to adoration it took all
      his strength to lie back down until he
      finally fell asleep and the spurned
      muse left him just as I fell asleep
      laying my head on my journal and
      the poems I had not transcribed left me
      with only my child and my mate and
      the spring where I knelt and chopped through ice
      to draw the blessing of water let
      us praise Berlioz for his unsung
      symphony of medicine and bread

      from #32 - Winter 2009

      Lee Sharkey

      “The immediate trigger for ‘Berlioz’ was a brief account in Oliver Sacks’ Musicophilia of Berlioz’s turning down the muse. I was struck by the parallels with my own experience of lucid memory—a house fire that devoured among other things seventeen years of my writing, my books, my child’s drawings, and my dog—and that earlier, involuntary loss became the emotional driver of the poem. The first line came to me, announcing its rhythm, and I knew from the start that ‘Berlioz’ would be written in syllabics.”

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