Current occupant, Rhino & The concert
by Aseem Kaul
[ poetry - february 08 ]
Current occupant
They all write to him -
the fashionable ones -
keepers of glossy seasons
and accessorized days,
high priests of a prêt-a-porter beauty,
their catalogues filled
with the latest styles of happiness
and the perfection of rooms
when not occupied.
The world offers him so much
that I wonder what he's done
to deserve it, and why,
if he's so popular,
he never gets anything personal.
I know this because I've taken
to intercepting his mail:
claiming it for my own,
then throwing it away without a glance.
I tell myself it's for his own good -
to keep him from temptation -
but really it's just envy. Still,
I figure what he doesn't know
won't hurt him, and besides,
it's his own fault for being too lazy
to pick up his mail -
making me do it instead -
the nerve! As if I were
his slave! As if I didn't know
about his affair with the man
who lived here before
(it's on the label, after all,
their names side by side, mocking me).
This way, at least we're equal,
at least we have in common
this loneliness we share
like a blank envelope;
and the mornings that arrive
day after day, like a message
not meant for us.
Rhino
He has no talent for dilemma.
Marooned in the singleness of
his purpose, he understands
neither the morality of cattle
with their balance of pro and con,
nor the hard-won philosophy
of the stags, their proud heads
branching endlessly.
He does not see this as a handicap.
Driven only by the north of his rage
he flings himself into controversy,
head lowered, one and a half
tons of pure, snorting muscle,
his mind projected to a single point,
seeking impact with the world.
If men kill for this, it is easy
to see why they mistake bluster
for virility, take the intensity
of the rhino's aggression
as proof of his courage.
But we, who know better,
must question the necessity
for armour, for this too thick skin;
must ask why, if he fears nothing,
the rhino must prove his
dominance again and again,
by attacking all that he sees?
The concert
I get there early: the orchestra
dismantled on the stage
like an engine, its parts stripped bare;
music reduced to its most basic
components: cellos greased
with gloom, violins tightened
to their proper torque, gleaming
electrodes of trumpets -
brazen fuses waiting to melt
in the crucible of sound -
flutes like spark plugs,
notes blown from them like dust,
and a piano that lies open like a
fusebox, intricate with wires.
How strange to think that
these instruments, assembled
and properly tuned, could
form so formidable a machine:
the dynamo of Beethoven
turning movement to energy,
the concerto thrumming steadily
at first, then opening to full
throttle, igniting the blood,
expanding with its roar
the battered cylinders of the heart.
