Levi Wagenmaker

1.

that night at the opera

the woman with the horribly disfigured face
suspected secondary motives
when I asked her out
to a night of Wagner
she murmured that Hitler loved Wagner
but when I told her that I felt certain
of Hitler's giving the opera house a miss
that night
she accepted my invitation
with something distantly recognisable
as a smile

opera audiences consist entirely
of civilised and cultured persons
and so before the lights went down
and after they came on again
eyes studiously ignored my companion
no sly whispering
no giggles drowned out by parents' sudden
bouts of coughing
none of those present had brought
(if they had any at all)
any children

but while the audience sat back
in shadowy black-out conducive
to refined enjoyment
on stage
Wagner's Valkyries did all
the screaming

Hitler would have loved it

Levi Wagenmaker (1944 - ) is a retired journalist, living in the Netherlands for most of the year, and in France for some of it, with three bitches, two
of whom are dogs. Enamoured life-long of language (and languages), for reasons immaterial to the act he writes poetry in English only, even if he could most likely manage it in a few other tongues. His poems have been published on line more than in print - and Danse Macabre is very proud to count themselves among such of Levi's

ports of call. Ye Olde Google will tell the curious all the whats, wherefores, and when-nots.

2.

another night at the opera

the composer Misha Mindipov
is not a Russian man
in fact
not a man at all
but a woman born in transit
on a transatlantic flight
somehow
her mother...
there had not been a father
was all that woman ever declared
although she did not divagate
into stories of miraculous conception
and extra painful (for obvious reasons)
virgin birth
she just forgot to divagate
into registering the infant girl
upon landing or at any later time
so in later life the child
chose the pseudonym by which she
became known to a small but select number
of musical insiderati
acknowledging affiliation
to the En Masse Musical Minimalists
MIndipov's scores clearly stipulated
that her operatic work should be exclusively
performed aboard large aircraft known as bombers
and only during nightly raids
by singers especially adept at singing like
sirens
the Scala died
spectacularly

3.

the day after the other night at the opera

operatic singers had agreed to forego their habitual emoluments
and perform in forma pauperis for the greater good of the nation (or whatever)

so that a medley of well-known operatic highlights would be performed at the Amsterdam Opera House at no cost to the public

the performance being made accessible free of charge as expected
appealed to quite a few of those of the Dutch eager to be considered as being
culturally engaged
and so they turned up by the bus-load

that night at the entrance an old man wild of mane had posted a large burlap sack full of shelled and salted peanuts which he chewed thoroughly but without swallowing
he held up a sign offering visitors
that he would spit thoroughly chewed peanuts into both their ears for a small consideration before they went in to the opera house the offer was completely ignored by all and there were mutterings from which the word nut could be discerned

the wild-maned old man was still there at the start of the interval one hour later and this time he pocketed quite a bit of cash and a journalist arranged for his photograph to be taken while he plied his nightly trade

the photograph appeared in the Monday editions
of morning and evening papers
to illustrate the news
that a young woman had lost the use of both her ears when she destroyed both her ear-drums with a kitchen-knife

in an attempt to maximise the profit
from her investment made at an otherwise free night out at the Amsterdam opera house while preparing a sandwich smeared with what was much like peanut butter orally inserted into both her ears by a wild-maned old man distantly related to Lucia di Lammermoor

danse macabre xxxii

kismet