Named for the melody that is the basis to which other parts are added in polyphonic music, Christopher Kondrich’s Canto Fermo is a long, ornate poem in which the elements of voice—tone and texture—are beautifully and elegantly sustained. Moreover—and what’s unusual for a work of this length—the poem never permits our attention to wander. In Canto Fermo Kondrich has created a drama of the subtle transactions between both self and self and self and other, presenting two distinct but overlapping narratives. One is allegorical, in which a piano-playing guru named Tim, a pharmaceutical cure-all called “T,” and the laboratory where it’s produced are all elements in the formation of a self (the speaker) seeking unity. The other thread concerns a past self and a present self who overcome various vicissitudes in order to merge in the voice of the poet. Canto Fermo is rich in many ways, not the least of which is in its periodic mimicry of legal and scientific language. It is also humorous, as in this brief, parodistic meditation on selfhood: “I spoke about how you / were another person / entirely which made me / think that there was / someone else who / might want to be me / as much as I did.” Its candor is unsentimental; its intelligence is never ponderous or pretentious. It is full of vitality, constantly propelling itself forward with admirable energy, even as it dismantles the taken-for-granted wholeness of life to create the wholeness of art: “Sometimes we need to dash / ourselves on the rocks, because in reassembling / we discover what we were composed of. Without first / breaking . . . we cannot be whole.”
—Mark Strand
from Canto Fermo
Lying awake
I heard two voices
both of which were mine.
I was always afraid they
would remove what I held
in my invisible hands
and then came the hour
I had to accept
because living meant
accepting the loss
of one hour after another
or what felt like an hour,
which could be two,
which could be none,
a mere few minutes
compressed into a rock
the size of a thumb.
I spent part of the night
on the couch another part
at the kitchen table—
I would like some tea
said one of my voices.
*
Tim was over,
saying he’d move
his fingers over the keys
with more agility
and emotion
in a body he created.
What if this body
is just a projection
of a weak mind?
What if my fingers
are where the
weakness resides?
He handed me
a bottle of pills
and I told him
I’ve had my hands
on those for a while.
I was packing,
and Tim and I
were suspended
just like the mobiles
in my suitcase.
Why several mobiles?
Because, I said,
what if I encounter
several trees?
*
I prepared for the recital
by clearing the path of stray rocks.
I did whatever I thought to do,
following my mind like a nose
from one room to the next.
At times, I imagined
my suit walking around
without a body inside it,
just the suit by the window
trying to adjust its tie.
*
Since the future
is full of music,
Tim said, we need
to find a way to
bring it closer,
to brush our end
against its end,
but we must remain
organized, our aim
at this time must be
to get a clear picture
of our auditory field.
If you sit where I can see you
and I sit at the piano,
we can coordinate our ideas
and thoughts and memories
so they fit together
even though they are
completely separate
and meaningful in their
own right, which is to say
that whatever is inside us
can be threaded outside us
into something wonderful
and this is called counterpoint,
this is how I get up in the morning
and how I go to sleep at night
knowing that I will be there
when I awake. If you sit here
and I sit by the piano
without touching the piano
as you have requested,
we can listen to our elements
we can project them in such a way
that they undergo as many
changes as possible in form
and scope and we’ll change as well
into people we no longer recognize
but know we must have met
along the way. I consider
my chair a closer companion
than anyone I know—
how am I supposed to
go about loving someone
more than this chair
even though its legs wobble
and falling through it
is always on my mind
and the keys receive this worry
with every touch.
*
And while I have your attention,
Tim continued, sometimes I am struck
with such overwhelming joy and sadness
for this strange instrument that I’m glad
I live alone and that I’ve shored up my house
with all the things I had lying around,
so no one, not even the wind, could destroy it
and even if I wanted it destroyed,
I would have to do it myself,
with my own hands, with a bat
or pipe or match, and I’d have to decide
beforehand to do it and even if this decision
was made rashly, I would’ve made it
with some manner of intent.
The thrashing or burning would rid
the next day of having to decide
whether or not to thrash or burn it.
Every day I have to make this decision,
and regardless if I am satisfied with it,
I have to abide by the metronome
and hope that it will allow me
the mistakes I know I will make.
*
I knew I had to leave
because it had occurred to me
that it was the only thing left to do.
We have a greater capacity
for knowledge and a greater
capacity for pain, I said to Tim,
a capacity that is awkward
and cumbersome and never full
even when it’s bored out of its mind.
I wish I could say more
so I could ensure you’d
always have someone
around who’d listen but
I have to go. I wasn’t going
to say it again and then
I did, I said it and saw the air
outside wafting against
the window like the breath
of a dog waiting for me, waiting
for something I would do
to make us both so certain
that the trees and sky
were there, were ours.
*
So I take my hand,
and even though I know my hand,
I know I know it,
it feels like your hand.
I take it but I’m tired.
I know I’m tired because I squeeze
what I see between my eyelids.
Then I dream that your mind is mine.
I dream that I secure it
with my end of the rope.
I wake while saying
that what I say is the truth,
that you should believe me
because I say it.
