Frank Gutsche

Frank Gutsche Poems

The Best Poem Of Frank Gutsche

The Chair

He sits on the old black chair,
upholstery worn through, long ago.
Into the heated day, his stare.
Distant the dusty contours flow.
Brown-burnt the summer hilltops,
Patches of olive groves defiant green.
Displaced across the road, a bus-stop,
respite for travelers never seen.

In terraced shade he sits in aged inaction,
his body haggard flesh-bound memory
that has no need of traction,
as movement proves treachery
to the idea that anything mattered,
that anything would mean
or bear a shape less tattered,
or the promise of a morning green.

Yet he remembers many distant autumns,
on the whim of a man still young,
a quest to withered Greek columns,
suddenly from a tired road they sprung.
In a hidden valley clogged with dust,
he saw temple pillars lightless towers,
ramparts forsaken to a sky nonplussed;
the bus emptied on thirsty mid-day hours.

He passed the columns of stony spines,
marble skeletons that asked what flesh
had covered them to form the shape of time;
a forgotten temple's enclosed stone-mesh;
it held back no brazen goats or sheep,
with gaps as wide as a city-gate;
he halted and stood in wonder deep,
anchored down by a sudden weight.

The singing, a goat-herd girl very young,
her flock stumbling on ancient gravel rough,
a melancholy folk-song sweetly sung,
that spoke of longing and deepest love;
of red flowers floating in a cold spring,
in its melody drunken dreams drowned
under crumbling arches' frozen wings,
stood she: his heart had found a sound.

Amalia: a smile that begged a kiss,
a memory her gift, a murmered pain.
In the dust of broken centuries a bliss
that kings and emperors sought in vain.

Amalia: his heartbeat echoed transposed,
in a world of city roofs, tall sun-lit spires,
along fissures of morning shadows,
she was what he most desired.

Amalia: he followed her to the city high.
Broken arches, ambitions, stolen deeds;
to dance under Milan's grey Saturn sky,
with the virgin, a snake crawling at her feet.

Amalia: he played the music to her dance;
the piano-master, keys black and white;
then a different hand played its chance,
her heart turned to another knight.

On the old black chair in terraced shade;
he sits and stares across the road.
His bus stopped, and here he stayed;
found the barren fields of summer gold.

On time's currents his heart was the sky,
he waited for the daylight to flood his nights,
the beat of long red years went by,
his piano wept his copper-gilded plights.

Eyes closed: today she stands before his chair;
in a dream her smile begs a kiss unbound,
his sky has found her earth declare,
Amalia: her heart has found his sound.

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