Samuel Washington Allen Prize selected by Lloyd Schwartz
Threads of Distant Music: A Garland of Sonnets
i.
I clean the dusty floors, upstairs and down,
scour coffee stains from inside every cup –
display domestic virtues I don’t own.
This evening’s full moon rises up so fine –
a guardian angel, hovering over town –
you murmur to me, let’s stay out all night….
Aunt Magda said that in her mother’s prime,
Roma came calling, with their caravans,
blessed with grandfather’s yes, to use his land.
When done with her chores, Paulina would glide
out of their farmhouse, to the new-made camp,
a thread of distant music her sole guide.
She’d see the campfire’s flickerings, and then
wood smoke, folks dancing, strains of violin.
ii.
Wood smoke, folks dancing, strains of violin –
a little crowd was clustered in the dark.
Paulina moved close; listening, pensive,
where women sat with babies in their arms.
A young man offered her his violin –
he showed her how to draw the bow across;
his hand over hers, bow upon the strings.
Not difficult, he breathed. Then she was lost –
possessed by music she could feel within.
Her own granddaughter, decades afterwards,
would tell her girl, Anna: You can’t be ours –
the Gypsies must have left you! So this child
believed something about her life was wrong:
I’ll have to roam to find where I belong.
iii.
I’ll have to roam to find where I belong,
Paulina mused, constricted by the farm.
She kneaded dough; tried to recall a song…
Papa had said some men might do her harm –
today, he heard horses, and hid her in
a giant haystack – really, just in time.
Cossacks arrived, barked questions, looked inside
the barn and house; left fast as they’d arrived.
A few days later, when their church bells chimed
they walked to worship – frightened, filled with thanks.
Mama wept; Papa’s thoughtful eyes were dry;
their stoic sons prayed, clenching their rough hands.
Later: it’s time you married, Papa said.
Paulina thought, what might I do instead?
iv.
Paulina thought: what might I do instead?
Could I locate my long-gone Roma friend?
Or make my way to that far market-town
where dark-eyed Maks plays the accordion?
She stood to be blessed, in her parents’ house,
the chosen husband standing at her side:
nervous, polite Bogdan. Then they stepped out,
just as they’d done before she’d been his bride.
The villagers strolled with them to the church –
at the Virgin’s altar, she set her flowers.
Saint Paul said: better marry, than to burn,
yet she burned with these secret thoughts of hers.
She said her vows – did she have any choice?
She listened to a disembodied voice….
v.
She listened to a disembodied voice –
the priest again, Paulina realized,
saying burial prayers for her small boy
-her first-born. Unexpected, when he died.
Paulina gazed beyond the wooden fence
around the graveyard’s edge, where flat fields stretched
in all directions. She would suffocate
if she could not soon get outside that gate.
Back home, her husband and eldest brother
stepped aside for quiet conversation;
they gathered closely, to talk with Papa –
Paulina, left out, felt indignation.
Cossacks had conscripted both men – they’d leave.
Paulina would stay here at home, to grieve.
vi.
Paulina stayed back here at home, to grieve
her second son, his infant life cut short.
Paulina yearned for some kind of reprieve
from nightmares; from her endless toil and hurt.
Her Mama counseled prayer. Could she believe
in Heaven’s mercy when she’d suffered so?
Her husband summoned her – now she must go
with her brother, headed first to Danzig,
from there to Bremen’s port, then on a boat
bound for America, a distant land.
Sick to her stomach, every ocean-day
in steerage; struggling to understand.
She wondered if someone had told Bogdan
that she would come to him with empty hands.
vii.
She came to the New World with empty hands –
hardly a cent, her boot heels wearing down;
ship’s manifest listing her as Russian.
Their journey took them to a mining town;
a dreary place, sooted dark with coal dust.
Within a year, Paulina was with child.
Coal mines played out. Each pay packet held less.
Magda was born while they were on the road;
they settled; searched for a new way to live.
Not too long after, Kasia was born.
Bogdan went off to work one day, was killed
when he fell off some makeshift scaffolding.
Paulina, with two small girls, was alone –
unable, now, to earn the passage home.
viii.
Unable, now, to earn the passage home –
she’d have to stay where she could earn enough
to feed her little ones. She didn’t know
a soul except her brother, who’d moved north.
Paulina followed, worked in textile mills.
Magda left school to be a “bobbin girl;”
grew older, got a job in a hotel –
drew notice, as her stark beauty unfurled.
How Magda loved to talk with the young men
who came to eat and drink; to hear music!
When Paulina would hear her creeping in
at dawn, she’d beat her with an old broomstick.
Angry, with no desire to understand,
Magda packed up and moved in with a man.
ix.
Magda packed up and moved in with a man.
She liked him well enough, his easy ways –
until she felt the hard back of his hand;
began to think how she could get away.
She chose a kinder man; classier, too –
a music lover. Her Herbert could play
stringed instruments! Of course, their love was true,
as they promised each other, every day.
Magda fell pregnant. Work at the hotel
grew harder; she felt ill, her waist thickened.
Her shifts dragged on, she felt her ankles swell.
She bought a wedding ring. Her child quickened.
After the birth, she placed him with a nurse –
essential, that she not lose any work.
x.
Essential, that she not lose any work.
Herbert attended university,
but left before the start of the next term –
both felt bad, boarding out baby Herbie.
They married, finally, at city hall –
invited Kasia; found a two-room flat.
Life seemed, at long last, to be going well –
they had a home, could bring their baby back….
But Herbie’s nurse had left. Nobody knew
where she had gone and taken their small son.
They searched, they wept; accepted it was true –
they’d lost him. They conceived another child.
When Lidia was born, they’d celebrate –
they thought they had escaped the curse of fate.
xi.
They finally had escaped their ill fate,
decided they would build a family,
decent and decorous beyond a doubt.
Lidia was a serious child, and she
excelled at school; helped her Mama at home
in those depression-times, with money tight.
While Mama worked, she watched the little ones
and never, ever, stayed out late at night.
But when her soul was troubled, she would play
piano, until sadness was no more.
She married young, impelled to get away
from her home, where sorrows filled every drawer.
Lidia’s husband brought her to a place
where there was no piano to bring grace.
xii.
Where there was no piano to bring grace,
Lidia’s soul began to shrink inside.
She expected a child, who would replace
her music. Before it was born, it died.
Lidia felt that she might die as well –
from sadness, boredom; from her dull routine:
kitchen-to-bedroom wound the ropes of hell;
youth and romance reduced to a bad dream.
She rallied when little Anna was born.
Her child, to reconcile present and past!
Lidia’s rising spirits did not last –
no newborn child could live up to the task
of cheering her, nor was made to contain
the generations’ concentrated pain.
xiii.
The generations’ concentrated pain –
a sharp inheritance for anyone.
Yet children sometimes sleep on beds of nails
and rise up smiling, in the new day’s sun.
From little child to girl, to woman grown –
Anna bought records: rock & roll, and blues.
She’d play them endlessly, and sing along,
learning each lyric, notes of every tune.
She looked older than her age, sneaked in bars
that played live music – not to drink, but stand
and listen; met a boy who played guitar –
they talked of forming a duo or band.
You didn’t need a crystal ball to know
that Lidia was destined to explode.
xiv.
Tense Lidia was destined to explode –
resentment built up in her voice and eyes.
Her family warned her that a break approached,
so when it did, it came as no surprise
except to Anna, wandering home at dawn
in shorts and tee shirt, red athletic shoes –
telling Lidia she’d been for a run –
for all I know, Anna’s story was true.
Lidia kept a long stick by the door.
She beat Anna until she welted red
as her old shoes. Anna cried out no more!
Lidia screamed and wept, while Anna fled.
As Kasia’s daughter, I know all these things –
Wood smoke, dancing, and strains of violins.
xv.
Wood smoke, folks dancing, strains of violins –
I’ll have to roam, to find where I belong.
Paulina thought, what might I do instead?
She listened to a disembodied voice –
while staying there at home, she’d surely grieve.
She came to the New World with empty hands,
unable, now, to earn the passage home.
Magda packed up and moved in with a man –
essential, that she not lose any work.
They thought they had escaped the curse of fate,
but without a piano, found no grace
in generations’ concentrated pain:
poor pent-up Lidia – destined to explode.
Dancing to violins, amid wood smoke.
Denise Provost has published in such journals as the Bagel Bards anthologies, Ibbetson Street, Muddy River Poetry Review, qarrtsiluni, Quadrille, Poetry Porch’s Sonnet Scroll, Sanctuary, and Light Quarterly. She received the New England Poetry Club’s Samuel Washington Allen award in 2021, and the Best Love Sonnet award from the Maria C. Faust Sonnet Competition in 2012. Her chapbook Curious Peach was published by Ibbetson Street Press in 2019, and her collection City of Stories is forthcoming from Cervena Barva Press.