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The Key of C Does Not Know My Biography
(Stravinsky, 1937-1942)
In Sancellemoz they read the Philokalia while
in the rue St. Honor his moderato alla breve coughed
not once for Nicodemus on Mount Athos or
Makarius of Corinth even if the resurrection were Docetic
and the tonic a familiar C.
It was the worst year of his life.
Tuberculosis drowned his daughter Mika and
his wife at Sancellemoz; he himself and then Milena
spat up blood; his mother died
and Wermacht panzers rumbled toward the Maginot.
He wrote in C. He wrote Larghetto concertante
in the sanatorium and though it was no Sacre du Printemps
the spring would have its rites: fists of earth
thrown in open graves at Saint Genevive.
He wrote in C in C in C, was diatonic in extreme
and in the suite of dances the fugatos
the Italianate transparency of theme you'd never
guess he lit the candles every night in agony
beside the image of La Vierge de perptual secours.
Then Hollywood. Then the allegretto and the largo
and the Disney dinosaurs roaring to Stokowsky's Sacre
that frightened little children at the matinees.
Then war. Then holocaust. He wrote in C.
His one entirely boring work had saved his life
by counting repetitions like the telling of a rosary--
dominant and tonic, tonic and the dominant--
tonal bricks to build a house in which he'd pitch at last
a tall dodecaphonic tent and
call the Angel down for Abraham.
He said the key of C
did not know his biography.
--John Matthias
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