Margaret Chula: Mesto

Margaret Chula: Mesto

Mesto

In September 2010, I was appointed Poet Laureate of Friends of Chamber Music for their 2010-11 season. For the past four months, I have been writing original poems during each of the concerts in the Classic Series, as well as the Not So Classic and Vocal Arts Series concerts. These poems have been posted on the Friends of Chamber Music website (http://www.focm.org) and their Facebook page, as well as in print in the concert programs. For each concert, I have attempted to capture the essence of the music—envisioning scenes, characters, and drama invoked by the musicians. To my knowledge, I am the only chamber music Poet Laureate in the nation. It has been a unique challenge to put into poetry the music of composers, played by internationally renown chamber ensembles. 

Here's a recent poem I wrote to Bela Bartok's Quartet No 6 performed on December 7, 2010 by the amazing Takacs Quartet. Mesto is Italian for 'sad' or 'sorrowful'. 

MESTO 

          Written while listening to Bela Bartók’s Quartet No. 6 

          composed in Budapest, 1939 

Damp cave in a foreign land. A woman sits 

surrounded by a circle of stones to protect her 

from the night creatures that crawl and fly. 

Day and night, night and day measured  

by the stitches she unravels from a sweater 

left by her beloved—taken away  

how many months ago? 

Every day she knits it back together.  

The smell of her beloved is fading—fading  

too the colors. Demon bats sweep down— 

seize skeins of yarn in their greedy claws.  

Her hair, greasy and thin, no longer attractive 

to man or beast. 

Nazis strut by— 

their staccato words  

barbs of fear  

crackling through 

the cavity 

of her hideaway. 

A deep cello sound resounds in her ears, 

then nails scratching on ancient walls. 

A turmoil of desire. A disturbing dissonance. 

Her last day, an intermezzo. She stumbles 

out into the spring sunshine, blinded  

with joy. The grass is cool and fragrant. 

Wildflowers begin their bloom. 

Today she will rest from her task, draping  

the yarn over her famine-swollen belly. 

How sweet the lark’s song. How slowly 

the heart beats at the end. 

Vultures carry away strands of yarn  

in their beaks. Lifting off, they flap 

their heavy black wings, bound  

for their aeries in the sky. 

                        Copyright by Margaret Chula