The Two Faces of Possibility

Here are two different poetical views of the possibilities of writing poetry—one positive and hopeful, the other doubtful and filled with struggle. Dickinson, the genius, is positive. I, something less than genius, am the struggler.


        I dwell in Possibility—
        A fairer House than Prose—
        More numerous of Windows—
        Superior—for doors—

        Of Chambers as the Cedars—
        Impregnable of Eye—
        And for an Everlasting Roof—
        The Gambrels of the Sky—

        Of Visitors—the Fairest—
        For occupation—This—
        The spreading wide my narrow Hands—
        To gather Paradise—

        —Emily Dickinson


Awaiting Dawn

I dwell in Possibility. ~ Emily Dickinson

I find this shifting space
A questionable habitation.  Hope
Remains a nocturne scarcely audible;
I scratch the notes into my book of songs
With feathers sharpened by a bitter blade.
What prayers are wrought inside this cage of night
Become a liquor brewed from sorrow's rain,
Libation for the hosts that crowd my bed,
That carol with the confidence of those
Who've passed the night of possibility
And woke to tell the tale.  Theirs is the song
My pen stays poised above the page to write.
However many feathers used and tossed,
I know the dawn will never come till this
Night's song is done.


Aside from the principal reference to Dickinson's poem above, you'll notice other Dickinsonian references: "hope" and "feathers" from her well-known "Hope" is the thing with feathers; "hosts" from this poem; and "a liquor brewed" obviously from this famous poem. If you know these works, you'll know why I referenced them.


"Awaiting Dawn" © Leticia Austria

Story of an End

Exposition

I've left my door ajar, as you have yours;
but while your lamps are seldom lit, I leave
mine burning full.  I'm not afraid of flame.
Whatever you may glimpse inside is all
there is of me, contained in one small room;
and should you spot a volume on the shelf—
protected in a slipcase—you might see
your name upon its spine.  Know, then, that I
have left it there for you to read someday,
if ever you decide to venture in.


Dénouement

Your door is shut and all is dark as death.
There is a terrible finality
that hovers in the very air around
that door; and as I pass it by, I bow
my head and clutch my shawl beneath my chin
as though in mourning.  I have no wish to stay;
for if I dared to knock, I'd only hear
an echo answer from the darkened room;
then I would know that you were lost to me,
and that my book lay dusty on the floor.

© Leticia Austria 2008, 2009
"Exposition" was originally titled "On the Shelf"; under that title, it won First Prize in the Awaken the Sleeping Poet contest in 2008 and was first published in Dreamcatcher.

Fortitude

I wrote this poem for two reasons: 1) to preserve the details of a particularly vivid dream I had years ago, and 2) as an exercise in blank verse. With the exception of the two closing lines of alexandrines, the poem is all iambic pentameter.

 

I had this dream years before I returned to the Church. Later, during the discernment of my religious vocation, I chanced to glance through St Teresa of Avila's Interior Castle  and was astounded at the similarity between my dream and some passages in Second Mansions. This didn't really influence my decision to enter the monastery, but I did feel that the Spirit was speaking to my subconscious, even though at the time of the dream I had no idea what it meant.

Fortitude

Its bleak, imposing walls were banked with thorns;
Its mullioned windows, hulled unblinking eyes,
Kept watch upon the silent stretch of mead.
It stood as if in wait for someone who,
Like me, has wandered through this somber land
To start anew, unfettered by old sins.
Beyond the ranks of walls, beyond the mead,
I saw a forest beckoning with songs
Of hidden sparrows, verdant shade to soothe
My weary limbs, and brooks to cleanse away
With healing lays the dust of sodden years.

But thorns grew tangled thick around the walls
That stood between me and that blessèd place;
They hid the ground to left, the ground to right;
The only way I saw to paradise
Was through the walls and out the farther side.
I ran, I know not how; I could not feel
My feet, but trusted that they carried me
Despite the trepidation in my heart.

And there the timbered door stood opened wide,
A gaping mouth in wait for prey, for those
Who go undaunted through its splintered jaws.
I could not feel my feet, still less the ground;
But air tore past me sharply on my way
Through darkness of a narrow corridor,
A strangled throat of cold and damp, and on
Towards a faint and faintly winking light.

From dark to light, a sudden brutal shock;
From narrow hall to courtyard, savage bright,
And teeming with a mass of flicking tongues
And glinting scales. I felt my courage clamp
Itself around my throat, an iron band
Through which my breath came forth a ragged thread.
I had no feet at all, or so it seemed;
I only knew my body fought its way
Across the writhing courtyard floor, above
The slithering mass that stabbed and snapped the air
About my legs.

                                              I saw a gate ahead
That opened on the mead. Its doors were not
The splintered jaws that I had met before;
These welcomed with the promise of new life.
The band about my throat sprang loose; relieved,
I felt once more the grass beneath my feet;
Once more I saw across a thorn-less mead
The longed-for wood, a little nearer now,
And felt my blood, that had grown cold with fright,
Become a pulsing joy through all my limbs.

The walls stood stark behind me, draped in heavy past,
And hope lay green beneath a widening arc of light.

© Leticia Austria 2008

Saturday at the Opera: In an Old Studio

I wrote this poem in 2009 as an homage to my coaching studio at Houston Grand Opera. The wonderful Joyce DiDonato (who knew my studio very well!) kindly published it a couple of years ago on her blog (I've since changed a couple of punctuations and added a break in the middle of the poem), so that is its credited "first appearance"—very appropriate, don't you think?

In an Old Studio

There used to be a piano in this room,
a mid-size grand, whose lid was always strewn
with scores of Verdi and Rossini. 
On the walls hung photos of the Tuscan hills,
a poster of a street in old Milan—
they've left their imprint, ghostly squares against
the graying of the years—and on this spot,
a music stand held up the legacy
of genius waiting to be issued forth
through chosen throats.
                                             Be still a minute. Listen.
Distant phrases of a long-lost life
will breathe across your brow and tell the tale
of striving for sublime exactitude,
of discipline and repetition, of
the just dissatisfaction with an end
that's less than art. Then close your eyes to touch
the keys that are no longer there, and you
will hear the splendor that was crafted in
this room, and leave it with the cadences
of ancient passions sighing in your soul.

© Leticia Austria 2009

Reunion

     Once upon a time, there was a restaurant in New York City called Saloon. It was conveniently situated across from the Metropolitan Opera -- one could go there for a late supper after a show, if one was not especially particular, just hungry. Since I've never lived in New York, but have only gone there to play auditions for the Houston Grand Opera and the HGO Studio, or to see a show at the Met once in a blue moon, I've actually eaten at Saloon more often than at any other New York restaurant. I realize Saloon is long gone, but then I've only been to New York twice since I left HGO. So I'm really waxing nostalgic right now.

     Back in my pre-monastery dark ages, when I was still secular and pagan (!), I was watching an episode of Sex and the City, in which Carrie goes to Saloon after a long absence to see if a particular waiter with whom she had a tryst was still working there. As I watched, I realized she was sitting at the very table where I had a post-opera supper with a singer friend some years earlier. This friend is one whom I rarely see, and when I do, it's usually only for a few hours or a couple of days, so each reunion is very precious. Consequently, I remember almost every detail of every one. It wasn't difficult, therefore, to write a poem about that late supper at Saloon.

     REUNION

     Tonight, at least,
     I see you -- in a candle's light suffused
     by ruby glass, the undulating arc
     cocooning us while headlights pierce the streets.
     The noisy years between remembering
     and living flesh are silenced by the voice
     I hear this moment, and I catch its words
     like colored moths, to pin them in a frame
     when daylight comes.

     Tonight, at least,
     you know me -- not the ink of written word,
     the masquerader hiding in plain sight,
     but sound and breath that waited out the page
     for temporary incarnation.  Yet
     what I intend to say is left unsaid,
     gray fumes dispersing in the wavering light.
     I only say the words that can survive
     when daylight comes.


     INCONTRO

     Stasera, almeno,
     ti vedo - nella luce di una candela soffusa
     da un vetro rubino, l’arco ondeggiante
     a proteggerci mentre i fari trafiggono le strade.
     Gli anni rumorosi tra il ricordo
     e la carne vivente sono zittiti dalla voce
     che ora sento, e ne catturo le parole
     come falene colorate, per appuntarle in una cornice
     quando la luce del giorno viene.

     Stasera, almeno,
     mi conosci – non l’inchiostro d’una parola scritta,
     la maschera che si nasconde in piena vista,
     ma suono e fiato che attendevano fuori alla pagina
     per provvisoria incarnazione. Finora,
     ciò che ho inteso dire è lasciato non detto,
     fumi grigi che si disperdono nella luce vacillante.
     Solo pronuncio le parole che possono sopravvivere
     Quando la luce del giorno viene.

     Italian translation by Federica Galetto
     © Leticia Austria 2011
     [first published in Italian and English in La Stanza di Nightingale]