The Best American Poetry

Who Will Stop the Madman – A Gogol's Prophecy [by Lera Auerbach]

My mother was born in 1940 to a Jewish family in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine. As Hitler's army marched East in 1941, my grandparents abandoned all their possessions (including their beloved library and cherished collection of musical instruments). They boarded the train – heading towards Siberia. The news of ghettos and the fate of Jews in Hitler's territories had reached them – all they could do was to flee into the unknown.

A few years earlier, my mother's grandfather, Berl Fishbein, the head of the family, was tortured to death by Stalin's secret police). His only "guilt" was being born Jewish. While my family evacuated, their train was bombed by Hitler's armies. Another tragedy occurred: the family lost my mother's grandmother Ettel Fishbein in the confusion and chaos. She was grief-stricken after the death of her beloved husband, frightened and confused over all the changes and sorrows that the war and evacuation brought. Somehow, after the bombing, she was no longer with my grandparents on the train. They never found her and never learned of her fate. 

With my one-year-old mother, my grandparents deboarded in Chelyabinsk – a closed industrial city at the gateway of Siberia. I was born there some thirty years later. They never returned to their abandoned homes in Ukraine.

In today's war, the invading army marches from the East, and more than a million Ukrainian refugees head West – to Germany in a mirror retrograde of history.

Earlier this year, I wrote a cello concerto, Diary of a Madman, inspired by Gogol's famous short story about Poprishchin, a government clerk who gradually descends into insanity. The concerto was premiered last month by the Munich Philharmonic, Giedrė Šlekytė, and Gautier Capuçon. Nikolai Gogol (or, more correctly, romanized from Ukrainian – Mykola Hohol) – was a genius writer, born in Ukraine, father of Russian language literature, and a visionary far beyond his time. I have been fascinated by his work all my life. Ten years ago, while composing my opera Gogol, I read and re-read everything he ever wrote. After my opera's premiere in Vienna, I received an open letter from Russia calling me "Vrag Naroda" (Enemy of the People) – the same terminology used against Shostakovich and many other artists years earlier. My website was hacked, erased, and replaced by the slogan "Death to Jews" and a skull. It felt terrible, but I was not afraid – since 1991, I lived in the West, and since 2001, I no longer had any relatives in Russia. I was responsible only for myself, my words, and my actions. 

While composing the cello concerto Diary of a Madman, I did not think of Vladimir Putin. Now, Gogol's tale carries an eerie resonance. Diary of a Madman is a story of a lowly government bureaucrat with a minimal, easily forgettable personality. In his increasingly demented diary entries, Poprishchin claims that a state cannot "be without a king." As the storyline progresses, he becomes increasingly mad, starts having delusions of grandeur, and, finally, on the "43rd of April of the year 2000" he believes himself as the King. (V. Putin was first elected president of Russia on the 7th of May of the year 2000. Gogol wrote his story in 1835!) Finally, Poprishchin ends up in an insane asylum. 

Perhaps, Gogol, the visionary and one of the greatest writers who ever lived – could see beyond the 19th and 20th century – into the heart of the 21st, where we are doomed to continue the eternal tale.

I think of my grandparents and my child-mother in Ukraine, leaving everything behind, heading into the unknown – evacuating from the onslaught of Hitler's army. Could they have imagined that eighty years later, the land of their birth would face again a very similar nightmare and that refugees would now head West to Germany to save their children?

Gogol's visions and nightmares become a reality, with the whole world turning into a lunatics' asylum as the great tragedy unfolds. Who will stop the Madman? 

 

Interview with Tzimon Barto: Languages, Poetry and Education [by Lera Auerbach]

 I am always fascinated by people who are masters of more than one profession.  I interviewed Tzimon Barto for the Best American Poetry blog. His passions and knowledge run deep. Tzimon Barto speaks seven languages fluently, reads ancient Greek, Latin, and Hebrew; his love of poetry is contagious, his ideas about education are inspiring.

      

For a taste of Barto's music-making here he is performing Mozart's Rondo for Piano and Orchestra in A major with the SWR Symphonieorchester and Christoph Eschenbach.

 

Growing a Book [by Lera Auerbach]

 

© Lera Auerbach - Monoprint

 

A tree is never just a tree.

Physical distance one can measure.
But what about the distance from oneself?

(Too far – and numbness spreads.
Too close – and you fall apart.)

A book is a tree:
it needs to take hold,
to find nourishment and water.

In its early stages it is fragile,
while the hurricane season is coming.

Where do all unwritten books go?
Completed manuscripts waiting for editors?
Lost publications waiting for readers?
Forgotten lives?

Like a child, a book requires sacrifice.
Its birth is painful.
Ultimately, it is never yours.

Who are you?

You are only its tool –
(and a highly imperfect one at that.)

The Art of Falling [by Lera Auerbach]

Papa takes me to figure-skating school.
The school has classes every day: running, choreography,
floor gymnastics, figure skating. With skates over my shoulder,
we come to the school half an hour before the classes begin.
Putting on skates is a ritual. Papa ties the laces
very tight. I am wearing a woolen dress,
tights, and a gray hat with a visor and a pompom.

“Well, how was it?” Papa asks after my first lesson.
I am covered in snow from head to toe.

“I don't know. We were taught how to fall.
For the entire hour. Fall – get up. Fall again. Fall, fall, fall!”

“To learn how to fall,” Papa says seriously,
taking off my skates, “is an art form in itself.
Who knows, maybe it was your most important life lesson.
If you learn how to fall – nothing can harm you.
If you learn how to fall – you can be fearless.” 

 

MARIA - Dialogues on Stabat Mater [by Lera Auerbach]

Some works have parallel lives. In 2006 Musikfest Bremen and Lucerne Festival commissioned me to write a piece for Gidon Kremer and the Kremerata Baltica. As soon as I started composing it, I knew that it would be reborn as a theater work one day. I did not know at that time how or when. I thought of Maria, the Grieving Mother, and the Other Maria – the mysterious one who remained in the shadows, the two outlines becoming one, blending their voices in never-ending dialogue where one voice echoes the other. This weekend, in Nürenberg, Germany, will be the world premiere of the new ballet Maria, choreographed by Goyo Montero with Diana Vishneva dancing the principal role. How did it happen?

On May 14, 2019, I met with Diana Vishneva for dinner in New York after attending an art exhibition together. I have known Diana for many years. I wrote my ballet Tatiana (after Pushkin's Evgeny Onegin), choreographed by John Neumeier with Diana in mind, and she has danced it numerous times since its creation. Diana visited me in Florida earlier that year to explore our future collaborations. That spring day, in 2019, on the lower side of Manhattan, we spoke about my idea for the ballet Maria based on the music of my Dialogues on Stabat Mater. We talked about different ways how to make the ballet Maria a reality and who could be the ideal choreographer to realize it on stage. We both, at the same time, breathed out: Goyo Montero. I called Goyo from that restaurant, and he said: "Yes!" 

Dialogues on Stabat Mater is an experiment. I wished to create a frame, a dialogue, an outlook from our own time on the same subject as Pergolesi's celebrated masterpiece. And to base this dialogue not so much on the differences of cultural and harmonic esthetics between the 18th and 21st centuries, but rather on their similarities, which is much more challenging. The image of the grieving mother is universal, just as pain is universal, although its expressions may vary based on cultural or religious backgrounds. 

Dialogue can happen at different levels. Is it a dialogue between different times, a beginning and an end, musician and audience, soli and tutti, loneliness and understanding? Perhaps, after all, the difference is not that great between vocal and purely instrumental, sacred language and the vernacular, monologue, and dialogue? Any prayer is a dialogue even though the addressee may not appear present. To whom am I addressing this?

 

No Boundaries [by Lera Auerbach]

Sometimes I wish to press the knife against my skin and let out blood
because the world is growing within me, overflowing; it overwhelms me –
for how is it possible that the world is within me while I’m within the world?
Where are the boundaries between us?
Where do I end, and the world begins?
I step barefoot on the ground and feel the rotation of the Earth.
I’m falling through the universe at breathtaking speed while not moving at all.

 

The Audience [by Lera Auerbach]

 

If I were dead, I wouldn’t want to stay around. I would fly to some other realm where I would no longer be myself but everything else at the same time. A happy, joyful radiance of a realm. 

But I wouldn’t be able to jump there if my heart was too heavy with worry for my loved ones who are still living in this world. I would have to stay around to see how they are coping. The living become the responsibility of the dead. Maybe, if I stayed around, I could still help them somehow. 

My dead grandparents and their parents and the parents of their parents und so weiter slightly move their invisible bodies making room for the new arrivals. They watch how I write these lines in English – the language they never spoke and slightly shake their heads.

 

Making an Inventory [by Lera Auerbach]

 

Bruegel's Sky - Fragment [Photo by Lera Auerbach]

To live, one must make an inventory:

Item 1: The sky. It is everywhere.

 

Item 2: People. There are many of them.

 

Item 3: It is hard to believe, but there are still birds. They occupy space between people and the sky. Sometimes they touch the heavens; sometimes they touch the earth.

 

Item 4: Conceptual thinking.

 

Item 5: Garbage cans. Discarded objects, personal treasures no longer loved such as broken limbs of dolls.

 

Item 6: Cars. Be aware of them.

 

Item 7: The rest of the world.

 

The dead are watching the shadows caused by light. 

Inside of each shadow, a small invisible death is practicing the art of dying.

 

The Cat of Montserrat [by Lera Auerbach]

My memory: meeting a Montserrat cat –
she is sitting beneath Pablo Casals’ sculpture –
the true owner of his bronze cello
with whiskers sniffing mountain air.
It is Fall. It’s sunny, but the air is already
keeping a promise of the storms ahead.
I am now worried about this cat –
the cat that guards Casals and his cello.

Who will feed her during the winter?
Who will brush her tricolored coat?
Who will make her feel safe in the mountains?

I beckon the cat to follow, promising
to take good care of her if she lets me.
But the cat sniffs Casals’ dusty shoes,
raises her tail, and turns away.
I feel abandoned. I pray to the Black Virgin
to protect this proud feline. I ask Casals
to keep watch and play sometimes
for the cat’s hunting pleasures
El cant del ocells (The Song of the Birds.)

The air shimmers with hidden music.
The cat catches overtones – and the horizon shifts.

 

 

The Layers of “To Be” [by Lera Auerbach]

Labyrinth - Ink on Handmade Paper by Lera Auerbach

The verb “to be” is very short, yet it contains layers of existence.
It is possible to hide in these folds – that’s the secret of survival.
You share hiding spaces with ghosts, and ghosts become you.
You speak for them because, generally speaking, ghosts cannot speak.
But you can. Words flood your mind, and your heart can’t mend
broken words and broken promises. Your heart murmurs between the beats,
and the dead encourage it to keep on beating.

If I raise my hand – would my fingers touch the invisible hand of my nanny Marianna?
Or my grandma Alichka? Can love just disappear with the departed
or some crucial nothingness stays around, protecting you in moments of despair?
You can’t see the thread in the darkness, but you can choose to believe it’s there –
to guide you through the labyrinth of your own making.

The Shadows of Memories [by Lera Auerbach]

Untitled [Oil on Canvas] by Lera Auerbach

 

1. Forgetting Ignorance

The world is created anew. I often fail to see it and think as if it was still the old world that I knew. I forget my ignorance.

My mother doesn’t own a computer and doesn’t understand how the Internet works. It’s all mundanely miraculous and miraculously mundane to her. I try to explain but realize that I don’t understand it either. I can navigate it, but I do not know who or what is staring at me from the other side of the screen.

 

2. Reflection

I spit out blood from my bleeding gums and, looking at the sink, see my death.

 

3. The Shadows of Memories

One can think about so many things and nothing at all.
How can nothing be something?
How can nothing be?

Can a shadow cast a shadow?
Perhaps within each shadow lies a deeper shadow, just like within the first death, lies the second death. 
If a person can be born more than once, it’s possible that after he is dead, he dies again – a death within death from which it is impossible to return. In this second death, he loses not only his memories but the shadows of memories.

When did Eurydice die?

Songs in Minor Keys [by Lera Auerbach]

Leitmotifs [Photo by Lera Auerbach]

Every day I give birth
to my death. Each death is different.
They flutter around like moths.
I find them in dusty corners, in drawers,
or trapped in the spider webs
hanging from the ceiling. My deaths
can see my ancestors and talk to them.
My deaths sing to each other
children's songs in minor keys.
They prefer lullabies.
I fall asleep, listening.

Creation According to the Cat [by Lera Auerbach]

 

 

Oil on Metal Roof Tile [by Lera Auerbach]

When God created animals, He first asked each animal for their permission. But He never received the Cat’s blessing. The Cat just didn’t answer, and God took the Cat’s silence as “yes.” But the Cat simply needed some time to think whether to enter into existence. It needed to look through the open doors of creation and then decide if it wanted to be in or out, but God was in a rush and didn’t pay enough attention to subtleties. So, He created the Cat along with all other animals. Later, the Cat reprimanded God. The Cat said that it was going to answer “no,” that God created it against its will, and that God needed to compensate it for all the pain and suffering since the creation of the world.

It is why God bestowed the Cat with nine lives. This way, it could have additional time to decide whether to stay alive or not. That’s why the Cat, unlike others, can move through time – it understands its porous nature and knows how to slip through. The Cat doesn’t like closed doors. According to the Cat, a good door is a door half-opened (or half-closed depending on the perspective.) According to the Cat, one should always see both sides and be free to change one’s mind at any time. According to the Cat, things only pretend to be solid, but in truth, they are mostly empty spaces, and one needs to learn to see through their illusory solidity.

According to the Cat, one needs to learn how to disappear and, even more importantly, when.

 

The Еgg-matryoshka of Death [by Lera Auerbach]

Untitled - Japanese Ink on Handmade Paper [by Lera Auerbach]

1. Forever Present

Is there one more death within death?
And then one more death inside of that one?
And so on, so on, so on, infinitely dividing and dying again and again within each new division? The egg-matryoshka of death – the deeper we look, the smaller it becomes, indefinitely so. Et cetera. Et cetera.

Our time extends in both directions until nothing is left except the present everlasting moment.

 

2. Forgotten Memories

What happens to all forgotten memories?
Memories that are forgotten more than once?
Memories that lost their bodies of words and images?
What would happen if words lost their meanings and definitions?

My father is drawing the map of the dead.

 

3. The Kingdom of the Dead

The Kingdom of the Dead is far greater than the Kingdom of the Living. It is not surprising – all who are living, sooner or later join the Kingdom of the Dead, and as far as we know, the opposite doesn’t happen. If reincarnation exists, it still requires a new body, and the new body will sooner or later die – one can’t argue about that.

The dead are everywhere – we breathe them in with the air.

My father marks the graves of our deceased relatives on his hand-drawn map of the cemetery. I am supposed to find them one day. I wonder if I ever will.

 

4. Falling

The words fall from the sky like leaves from a tree.
Do fishes go to school?
I count visible stars – there are more of them than my fingers and toes combined, so I stop counting.

My father complains there are no longer any stars in the sky. He is holding my mom’s hand to stop it from shaking.

I feel I am falling,
falling,
falling…
while failing to make a wish.

 

5. C-sharp

The note C-sharp is what binds all stars and holds this Universe together.
At night you can hear C-sharp quietly buzzing. I imagine it as the endless string connecting and holding together heavenly objects, vibrating, and shimmering.

My umbilical cord was never tied correctly. If I could press my eye to my belly – I could probably see through my untied belly button all that is inside.

 

6. Flossing the Dead

Sometimes the dead are so thick in the air – it’s hard to breathe.

You feel your heart trying and trying to pump blood, but the air is too thick and heavy. The dead get stuck between the teeth, and no flossing can help.

The air bleeds history, and you can’t escape it – even in your loneliest hour, you are never alone.

 

 

The Loyalty of Toes [by Lera Auerbach]

Philippe Faraut's Sculpting Feet [Video Still Frame]

 

1. The Loyalty of Toes

You need to fall, and more than once, before you learn to fly.

Do the words fail me, or do I fail the words?
Words are strange beings, for they are certainly “beings” with their peculiar moods and caprices.

If toes are the fingers of the foot, why do we call them “toes” and not “fingers”?
And why are the fingers not the toes of the hands if the opposite holds true?

In Russian, there is only one word for toes and fingers – pal’tsi. If you want to be specific, you can say pal’tsi na nogah – “fingers on the legs'' or pal’tsi na rukah – “fingers on the arms,” but the word itself remains the same.

It’s surprising how rarely we think of our toes, even though they are always there for us. There is something very loyal in the toes’ devotion. The fingers could lead you into trouble, but not the toes. Toes have no agenda of their own. If anything, they may even help you escape the trouble that the fingers may cause. Yet, we rarely acknowledge their existence or notice their individuality.

2. Vanity

Back in Russia, I used to wear nylon stockings. It was considered impolite to have bare legs. The pantyhose tore easily; it was difficult to mend them unnoticeably unless the run, as they said, was in a place hidden from view.

I was fifteen. I didn’t like to wear stockings – they itched, but many girls wore them even in the winter while I wore two pairs of woolen tights, called gamashi. Winters in Chelyabinsk were brutal. Stockings felt out of place – a summer butterfly amidst the snow. How vain one must be, thought I, to endanger your health like this – just so your legs could shimmer naked through the nylon and appear thin and delicate.

Was I vain too? I did wear pantyhose in the warmer weather when, in fact, it was too warm to wear anything. Perhaps I was.

3. Emotional Body Parts

I wonder if different parts of the body can feel emotions. I don’t mean physical pain. Pain is not an emotion – it is just pain. It can cause emotions, of course, and often it does. But could, for example, toes feel happiness or grief? Could my toes feel misunderstood, sad, or lonely?

Every few weeks, my father trims my mom’s toenails. He does it slowly and carefully as her toenails tend to grow into the skin. He applies red nail polish and carefully blows on her toes as if blessing them individually in some archaic ritual of creation.

I examine my toes – the skin seems flaky-white, dry. I think my toes feel unloved.

 

4. Greetings

The multitude of things is overbearing. Each object needs acknowledgment.

– Hello, drawers.
– Hello, hairbrush.
– Hello, toothpaste.

Everything is made by someone or something, assembled, put together. Yet, I fail to put together my own body parts.

– Hello, toes, – I say to my toes and bend them.
It looks like they are nodding their heads in greeting. If toes had heads, that is.

 

5. For-granted

My mouth is dry; I greet the water. The water likes to be greeted. It tastes better in gratitude.

It’s easy to take body parts for granted. Their feelings get hurt, and that’s when we feel pain and have no choice but to acknowledge their existence. If you have a bellyache, you become aware that you have a belly and intricate intestines with all their wiring inside – even if you may not know precisely how it all functions. After all, if you didn’t have a belly, you couldn’t possibly have a bellyache, even though we’ve been told that phantom pains in missing limbs do exist.

 

6. Why Toes Feel Sad

The toes say “thank you very much” when you take off your shoes. The toes are mostly very polite, unlike the fingers. The fingers can be rude and prideful. The toes are humbler.

Babies like to touch their toes. Babies are compact and generally friendly to their body parts. They wiggle their toes and say hello to them. Or they say some other greeting in their baby-tongue. They try to put toes in their month. Their fingers and toes often touch each other.

But then we grow and get taller and taller until the toes are so far away from our eyes that we forget about their existence, and that is why toes often feel sad. Oh, the quiet sadness of the toes. At least they have each other for company. I wonder if it is enough.

Navigating Through Dreams [by Lera Auerbach]

Japanese Ink on Paper © Lera Auerbach

1. The Air We Breathe

This year we all learned how to wash hands. Perhaps, we didn’t learn but only made a lot of noise. Washing hands, sanitizing, staying in quarantine, balancing lockdowns. Victims of our vocabulary, we hold on to the relative calm. Death is everywhere, but it is also nowhere; it’s the air itself.

The ghosts are shimmering as if trying to conceal tiny openings in the world’s material – the porous nature of time and space. This year we learned not only to wash hands but to count our loved ones. Just in case they disappear through an invisible opening and slip into another realm.

 

2. The Need To Function

The world is a gigantic tuning fork, connecting distant galaxies the way overtones connect to the fundamental tone. Each moment everything is being created anew with each vibration.

One wouldn’t have any problems if one didn’t have to exist in the world. If you are just a soundwave and not a particle – do you have any concerns?  No. The problem is that we exist as both – soundwaves and particles at the same time, and more often, we choose to behave like particles, thus needing to function somehow.

The pull of gravity is at its strongest in the morning when you just returned from the abyss of nothingness. (The ghosts are shimmering as if trying to conceal tiny openings in the world’s material.) 

 

3. Navigation

What happens to the world when we are asleep? We assume that everything stays the same – the room, for instance, doesn’t turn into another room. The furniture remains with all its scratches or other peculiarities. We assume it is the same furniture, but how can one be sure of anything?

In the Quantum Universe, it is quite possible that in our sleep, we slip into some parallel dimension and wake up in a different universe altogether that only looks the same but is not. This is how and why divorces happen. One day, you may realize that the person next to you only appears to be the one you fell in love with, but in fact, is a stranger from an unfamiliar realm.

How to navigate safely through dreams?

(This year, we learned not only to wash hands but to count our loved ones. Just in case they disappear through an invisible opening and slip into another realm. Just in case…)

 

Block-flute [by Lera Auerbach]

 

Marianna and I are at a summer retreat.
I am five years old. I have a wooden recorder
with me, a block-flute. I blow out melodies.

My parents left – they have some urgent matters.
What urgent matters could there be during the summer?
I play my flute. Igor is here with us. 

He is a genius, a chess prodigy who has won
chess games against the former world champions.
He is my brother, and he has very long legs. 

When Igor walks, I must run after him like a dog.
I quickly get tired. Igor puts me on his shoulders.

I imagine myself as an eagle, a stormy petrel, a seagull.
Igor runs; I fly after him – I am the wind.

The wind plays the flute. Grownups lie.
I know – my grandma, Musenka, is dead.
That’s why my parents left.
I will never see her again. Ne-ver.

“Iga, do you know?” I ask, landing my flight.
 “No,” he answers seriously.
Igor is almost an adult. Grownups lie.
(He Knows)

Double Bottom [by Lera Auerbach]

Ink on Paper by Lera Auerbach

 

When I was twelve, my parents took me camping near Lake Inyshko.

Supposedly, in this lake, Yemelyan Pugachev buried his stolen treasure. The treasure was never found because Lake Inyshko has two bottoms. The first bottom appears solid, just like the floor of a lake, but it’s not – there is a deeper depth beneath it with more water. The treasure sunk under the first level into the depth of the unseen.

My life seems to be like that – it appears solid, but beneath the first bottom, there is water again or different skies that conceal my labyrinth. When I misstep, I sink and find myself in the labyrinthine second layer of Lake Inyshko. I become lost like Pugachev’s treasure. I forget there is a world outside. I hold on to the thread of words and sounds, but I don’t know for certain if I can fully trust this thread.

Is the thread protecting its weaver or does it simply using the weaver’s abilities to manifest its own existence? Am I the weaver of the thread I’m weaving?

I like the notion of letting things go. Letting go makes me giddy; letting go turns me into a disobedient child. But every mischief is followed by a punishment.

Whom am I punishing?

The Solidity of Oceans [by Lera Auerbach]

Acrylic on Canvas by Lera Auerbach

 

1. THE SOLIDITY OF OCEANS

The ocean is still there where I left it. It will remain. It is solid (even though it’s not, but you know what I mean.) It’s dependable (it’s unpredictable; but also, dependable.) It has a smell; it can be touched and tasted. It exists. And that’s a lot – to be certain that something really exists in this world.

2. CREATION OF HUMANS

Once upon a time, there was a Creature. This Creature had a bet with another Creature that it is possible to drink the ocean dry. So, the Creature sat on the shore and started drinking water from the sea. It drank and drank until it had no room left in its belly, but it drank some more and exploded from within into billions of tiny creatures mostly made of water. That’s how humans were born.

3. JUST A MYTH

Perhaps, this greedy Creature never existed. Perhaps, it’s just a myth I made up. But the ocean existed, and it is still here. And I exist because I can feel the ocean. And you exist because you are reading this. So, there must be some truth in this myth. Or if not in this, then in another one. There must be some truth somewhere.

4. RED

One way to prove you exist is to let blood. What a weird way to say it – let blood. The blood is already there, inside of you, whether you let it or not. But what “to let blood” means is to cut yourself. If you bleed – you are alive. It’s that simple. Dead people can bleed too, but only at the beginning of their death. The longer they are dead, the less blood they have left. After a while, nothing red remains.

5. WHERE THE SOUL RESIDES

In old times people thought that the soul resided in the blood. But this didn’t make sense. Let’s say you donate your blood – does it mean you are donating your soul? No, the soul is inside and outside of your body because your body is just like a great painting – a mystery that can be studied and analyzed but never fully understood.

6. WHY WE CAN’T UNDERSTAND GOD

Anything we understand – we can destroy.
That is why we can never understand God.
We can only believe that He (She, It) is.
Or isn’t.
That’s all. 

What Remains? [by Lera Auerbach]

Ink on Music Paper © Lera Auerbach

 

 

What do I remember? 

Sounds, sound all around. 

I don’t know words yet, but I can feel melodies of phrases. 

Everything is music: the voices of people, the wind outside, the bell of the streetcar.

When people speak loudly, I want to cry – there are more sounds than I can hold! 

I have no space left to breathe and gasp for air.

The voices become quieter, slower, lower… 

I can breathe again.

 

(Volume) 

 

 

(2)

 

Mama is teaching her students. 

I am crawling on the rug.
I already know the names of the notes – Do-Re-Mi-Fa-Sol-La-Si.
They are my friends. Each note is a different sound,
and each note is a different color. 

Mama is explaining how sound flies.

If sound can fly – where are its wings? 

Perhaps, they are invisible – the sound is flying and flapping its invisible wings.

How does the sound look without its wings?

Lying on my belly, I try to imagine the body of the sound, without wings.  

Instead of the body – I only see wings – wings of different colors.
‘Do’ is white with a rainbow overflowing on feathers, ‘Sol’ is golden, ‘La’ is red.

I understand now: the sound is the wings – long or clipped, colorful, wavy…
The sound is the flight itself and the trail of after-flight;
the wound left in the air, disappearing like ripples in water.

The sound is what continues to echo in the memory when nothing is sounding.

 

(What Is Sound?)

 

(3)

 

My mother is carrying me in her arms,
“Look at your stroller now. Look at it for the last time.
You will never see it again.”

I see the doorway to the bedroom.
There is my stroller – red, much taller than me.

But what is ‘never’? 

What a strange word – so heavy –
this moment is forever engraved in my memory:
the red stroller and my mother’s words.

 

(What Is Never?)

 

 

(4)

 

My parents do not buy a new stroller.
Instead, they roll me around in a folding carriage,
an accessory intended for a large doll.
I do not like that doll. I’m afraid of her –
her plastic complacency, her empty eyes.
But the doll’s stroller is helpful – I quickly tire of walking.

When I was born, the doctors said I had problems with my legs
and would not be able to walk.
For a year, my frightened mother took me for therapy every day.
I walked ahead of schedule. 

More than walking, I love flying while listening to music,
hundreds of winged creatures – sounds –
holding me up, not letting me fall.

 

(Canceled Sentence)

 

 

(5)

 

My grandmother, Alichka, walks poorly. 

Her legs are bowed like two letters C’s. Pain hides in each step.

Alichka brings me to the Tsvilling Square. 

(She rolls me in the stroller from the doll I do not like.)

On the bench, next to her, sits an old woman with a mourning veil. 

She is mourning for her son. There was a war. Yurochka was only ten. 

He was all swollen from dropsy and hunger. 

He asked for a gun, "Just shoot me, mama." 

The doctor said Yurochka would not survive the night. 

He did not survive.

Alichka: “Maybe you can help us tomorrow with Lera?

Her parents are at work; she’s too weak for a nursery,

but it’s so difficult with my legs.”

 

Marianna entered my life – the guardian of my childhood.

 

(Are You Still Watching Over Me?)

 

 

(6)

 

I'm three and a half.
I can already read words and notes.

I create fairytales and stories –
l tell them to my old Rönisch upright piano.

Without music, words lose their magic. 

If I stand on one leg and press the piano pedal with the other foot –
the wings of sounds become so long
they can fly far away into the great unknown. 

Yet I feel that all is distorted, not what it could be…
But what could it be? 

 

Where do the true sounds hide?

 

(Searching)

 

(7)

 

Too bad that seated, I can’t reach the piano pedals. 

Mama does not allow me to play the piano while standing.
She says it is bad for my professional education.
Luckily, she’s not home during the day, and Marianna doesn’t mind. 

While standing, I can press the pedal and paint an ocean of sounds.
The ocean is calm. The ocean is enormous.
The ocean is the bluest of blues in E-flat major.
Arpeggios of waves slowly float under my fingers. 

 

Now a lonely sail appears / amidst the blue mist of the sea…

Rebellious, it seeks out a storm.*

 

The melody of the sail is full of awe. The sail is thirsty for the storm. 

– Ah, you want a storm? I'll show you a storm!

 

In between the sea and clouds proudly soars the stormy petrel.

He cries out, and the clouds hear his joy in the bird’s cry of courage.

Thunder sounds in foamy anger, the waves groan with the wind in conflict.**

 

A thunderstorm rages in C minor – lots of pedal, clusters of thunder, glissandi of winds. 

 

The ocean was swollen and sullen

Its billows were boiling with fury.***

 

One still hears the theme of the sail,
but it is irreparably destroyed by its daring dream. 

It is drowning – the theme of the sail sounds lower and lower,
sinking to the bottom of the sea.

 

Now the storm has passed.
The ocean is calm again, as before.
Triadic waves splash softly as if nothing had happened.
Only far in the clouds – a memory –
one can hear the theme of the dreamy sail.

I sob with delight and horror at the drama
that just erupted beneath my fingers.

 

*Mikhail Lermontov

** Maxim Gorkyi

*** Alexander Pushkin

 

(The Monstrous Power of Music)

 

(8)

 

When Mama returns, I want to repeat for her the story of the brave, lonely sail. 

But the theme of the sail is different now, and the waves are not the same... 

I cannot repeat my story. As in a crooked mirror –
what was beautiful before has turned into its ugly caricature.

I’m crying, no longer with delight, but with shame: everything’s false again.

Where did the true sounds disappear?

 

(Where?)

 

(9)

 

Mama says, “If you wish to save ‘true’ sounds,
you need to write them down as soon as they are born.”
She hands me a Notebook for Music.

“How do I write them down? With words?”

“Why words? You already know how to write notes.
When you have ideas for words, you should use letters,
but when you hear music – you should use notes.
With the help of notes, you can always find your way back
and remember what you played.
Music notation is a time machine
to travel to the past and to the future.
Written music remains forever.”

 

“Mama, what is ‘forever?’”

 

(What Remains?)

 

(10)

 

Every morning I remember that I have to go to kindergarten and begin to cry.

Papa comes to my crib. He is holding a small empty jar.

I keep on wailing.

“Here, take this – it’s a piggy bank for tears. Tears are precious,

and they should be protected. If you are so intent on crying,

then cry into this jar and save your tears.”

I obediently cry into the jar, accumulate tears.

Each drop – like a caught note written in my Notebook for Music.

Perhaps music notes are unshed tears? 

 

Where are you, my piggy bank of tears?

 

(Unshed Tears)