Maria Yudina Poem by David Floren

Smothered in moxie,
Maria Yudina, portly,
Deft and incredible,
Makes the Diabelli Variations
Intelligible.

With mature epoxy,
Glues 34 music boxes
Beyond manufacture.

Each pocked and bare-knuckled offering,
A rose—hips and sepals.

Can you believe
It’s Beethoven?

A City, a World (of God) —
Unspoken.

Unlike the one distrusted
By St. Augustine.
How could he know
The fortepiano,
Dueling the old aesthetic distractions?

Variations ordered by the Roman numerals.
Legions
Left no stone unturned.

Yearning.
Stones thrown over waters
To count the skips?

Love’s not glued together
like Nikes,
en masse. The heat
Rises! Moods shift.

Closer to the sun than Gaea
Grows the sequence.

How about one-by-one?
Thrown, the very pottery
Of throwing:
The ode.

Or one at a time?
All together now.

Outflanked,
The ranks break like bugs
Under lifted stones.

And all the Roman numerals,
London Bridges.
Falling down.

Micheal Douglas and Catherine-Zeta Jones:
Married, had a cherub.

There’s no Yudina clones.

Her one rumpled visage
Intones
A scrubbed atonement.

A few Steinways
Married her fingers
Clearing stave storks
For sonic liftoff.

In recording studios
She re-birthed the verb:
To bring!

She brought it for Russian anguish,
Squished under Stalin’s affection,
And risked a Caesarian section
Performed by a KGB surgeon.

Bringing readings, banned and
Blacklisted poems,
To hushed performances.

Her rhythmic ways are salad days.
The way she grows presto.

From sweet basil, the pesto.
From alla marcia maestoso
Soil - up, up and away.

Faced with her prayer
(Each finger a sayer
Of headphone sweetness) ,

It’s easy to foil
The steel of foible.
It simply uplifts.

A real gift, as formative as frankincense,
To impress the seal of conviction
On stones of notes, and smoke.

On Bach harmonies.
She burned her songbird
With every depression
Of ebonies and ivories.

To malinger no longer
In a wrong location.

“This is my vocation! I believe
In it and in my power
In it…The essence of my life is in it.”


[7-23-2001 Eugene, OR (rev.1 2-9-08 Livermore, CA) ]