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Two by Ruth Daigon
Batter Up
Died: Clare Ruth, once Broadway chorus girl became Babe Ruth's second wife.
"I cut down on his eating, his drinking and his friends."
(New York Times obituary)
Born with a laser beam in one eye,
and a tear in the other,
hands expert at stripping things,
she peeled him down
to the calcium deposit
in his bones and wept
to see him looking lean.
Clare was always moving
the clock ahead, closing
the day a little earlier,
waiting for the old man
he would soon become.
"My Sultan of Swat" she declared,
"once I loved your wild pitch,
your line drive, the staves
of your beer barrel ribs,
the sweet curve of your skull.
But you never stuck to home plate,
always a double play, a stolen base,
a new bat girl hanging around.
Life was a slug fest.
I've learned to play hard ball,
to throw you a curve--
better a bean ball. It's
just the beginning. I'll
learn to throw knucklers, screwballs,
sinkers, gophers to switch you
from a four-bag-swatter to a foul-tip,
scratch-hit, strike-out loser.
I'll watch you shrink and shrivel
on your final walk to the dugout."
Cultural Event
(Arbeit Macht Frei)
Our season tickets stamped on our arms,
we sit among the perfumed furs and patent leather
in our striped uniforms, waiting.
Footlights glow. She appears.
Opening chords lift off
like birds flying backwards.
Long skeins of sound
wrap loosely around listeners.
Phrases gleam brighter than
searchlights on prison towers.
High notes strict as flames
in burning synagogues
singe us in our seats.
Her burnished voice,
her tempos locked in marrow,
the even rhythm of her breath
moves us toward the showers.
She sings of spring melting shards of winter,
of summer burning along branches,
of seeds spiraling to earth
as light as babies falling in slow motion
into soft beds of soil.
The texture of her voice
rubbed smooth by each new season,
ours grown thin as parchment.
Now, she carves sound out of
a country of bare surfaces
where we pound rocks into pebbles
paving roads to Treblinka,
Buchenwald.
And when she sings of love
hidden circuits warm our bodies
packed in vats of ice.
The audience rises with applause,
the stage buried in bouquets.
She bows.
But from somewhere in the wings,
a voice hums lullabies of barbed wire
and the string quartet rests between numbers
waxing their bows.
Elizabeth Schwartzkopf was one of the most magnificent international sopranos. She sang opera, lieder, and everything that had ever been composed for the soprano voice. She concertized all over the world, and made more recordings than anyone in her field BUT she was not only a member of the Nazi Party but also a "friend" of Heinrich Himmler. Even back in the fifties everyone in the musical world knew about it, and no one did anything. Such was her power and fame. Recently the New York Times came out with this exposee sparked by a number of people who had long memories. However the British gave her the honor of Dame or some other royal recognition a few years ago because of "her contribution to music". I attended her farewell recital at Lincoln Center (I simply couldn't stay away because I had literally worshipped her BEFORE I knew about her Nazi past). This poem was a kind of closure for me.
Ruth Daigon -- http://www.freeyellow.com/members/lyric
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