You have beheld too many faces
endured too many balls
wig powder and
candlelight, tableaux
in the offing, royal damsels, the ceremony of bowing before
ministers, chamberlains, aristocratic graybeards at court
parliamentarians of other orders (mummies!)
Exquisite posing

They've wrapped you up
with their pound
notes, their courtly
documents, those feel-good hormones of the
‘momentarily fashionable' while next door
on Haymarket already a new
opera is being staged: the beggars —

Not one written by you

Once more you dive
into violins
and contrabassoons (Musick!), the
individual hues of woodwinds and
brass, rising up
skywards, no: riverwards
promising salvation
as though you were painting some other landscape

Had we had but a moment's
time
to fathom this world
what a feast we'd have had
what a culmination

It would have raised us up
despite its threefold repetition
twice before and once
after supper
(in the beginning)
forever

Had we had but a moment's
time or at least
a place
to inhabit the water music's
world of sound, link
London's river then
to the world of sagas
and that series of dances
with death
and Handel?
Under duress. If after
the masquerades of the ephemeral
when we danced on Haymarket
there were those bets placed on cockfights, those riots at the English
carnival on St. Bartholomew's Day (Puritans against
all the glorious drunkards - Puritans
and non-Puritans alike)
those excesses at the opera
(against Queen Anne's verdict
no screwing in the hall during scenes)
If in winter there were a light, perhaps a crystal
to bend our rays while we cling to it
as further south we cling to the advent
of a new season
Time! time! if we had it,
what might we do?

We might wander
an exploding world
as maggots and clustered worms
from eye-chinks, the corners
in our faces; we might believe

Translation: Susan Bernofsky