"The Composer," by W.H. Auden

Two-Faced Time

Time, the vicious versatile thug:

pickpocket, shoplifter, burglar,

armed robber, assassin, dictator . . . .

Why can't Time get a real job

like the rest of us?

Time, robust provider:

opener of space for life.

Enabler of Evolution. 

Angel of music. Parent

of our necessary illusions.

Kind casino boss, who gives us

good chances to win 

encounters with the Mystery

that may be God.

hans ostrom 2024

Upright Bass

The bass: like an agreeable, plump mayor
who understands the city of music
from the streets down. Or a geologist
who's studied the strata
below the tunes. A cool cat,
looking through sunglasses at a smoke-
clouded jazz bar, plucking thick strings
that seem to mutter to themselves
the words, "You have to understand,
yeah, you have to understand."

And the mayor stands aside,
lets the drums attack, the piano
scales rush and crash, the sax flash.
The mayor turns to the bassist
and says, "Oh, I understand,
brother, I understand."

hans ostrom 2023

A Night of Bluegrass

 [revised]

Go on and cut the top off-a that mountain

to get your coal, Mr. High Pockets. You

can't cut that high-pitched wail out of the air

where the mountain was

and shall ever be, in God's eyes.

And all them strings get picked and strummed,

chorded and teased, til here comes a

tightly braided tune, careful and true,

like the long gray hair

of a matriarch reading her Bible in blue

moonlight, rocking and praying She's

as heart-broken and reconciled as a ballad

about some young'ns gone too soon. Music

of the hills distills sadness, strains it

through an upright tradition

that Nashville goddamn tried to ruin.

But could not. And will not. 

"The Composer," by W.H. Auden

 Reading/video of a short poem by Mr. Wystan Hugh Auden in which he distinguishes between music and other arts. Poem is from his Collected Poems from Knopf. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1M48EyRsKQ

Bass and Bass

4:32 a.m., can't sleep,
can't stop thinking about
bass and bass. Bass guitar,
bass fishing. I assemble
do-it-yourself-dreams--
a lake where stringed
instruments swim, leap
for bugs while cranking
thudding beats. An

orchestra full
of slime-scaled instruments
playing Debassy's Wildlife
Biology Suite--the
audience gowned out
in mosquito nets and
hip waders. I order

my mind to order
itself: Stop this!
It opens its wide mouth
and laughs, teeth full
of black musical notes.


hans ostrom 2020

Yelling at the Opera

I think I know exactly
what happened to you.
Over many a conforming
year, you learned not to make
too much of your feelings.
CUT TO: an invitation to
the opera, where every syllable
was bellowed or shrieked,
the singers stuffed with
emotion like gowned
sausages. You felt

buffeted by melodrama,
and you thirsted for a wry
Delta blues song, oblique
and rude. Also brief. To be
trapped at the opera is no
hardship, so you would not
complain. Still it made you
want to yell. So you did,
alarming those assembled
around the intermission bar.
Someone sent for the car.


hans ostrom 2019

Oblique

Pavement is silence.
Rain is noise. Air's
a mystery filled
with solutions.
Trees, an anguish;
factories, a
disappointment. I
have heard the music
that results from
your playing. It is
less interesting than
you are, but I don't
blame it.


hans ostrom 2019

Oblique

Pavement is silence
and rain is noise.
Air is a mystery
filled with solutions.
Trees are anguish;
factories, disappointment.
I've heard the music
that results from your playing.
It is less interesting than
you, and who can blame it?



hans ostrom 2018

Music of Our Days

Behind the high green
muscular hedge (laurel),
a tall black Doberman
holds his howl mournfully.

He hears the red sound
of sirens. It hurts and disturbs
him. Self-soothing, he howls
again but at the end

of this extended note, he
moves the moan up
a half-note. The sound
is unexpected, artistic.

He is called Caesar, this
tall sad dog. Praise him.


hans ostrom 2018

Saxophone Sunset

(Ben Webster, "That's All")


Plump notes, tenor sax. Ripe
peaches, warm fuzz exteriorily
wry. Now

things must move uptown.
Phrases must front style.

Though even among neon
and hard traffic & hard lives
they do not lose
their memory of sunset.

Sweet, tart, sad, not bitter,
that's all.



hans ostrom 2018

After Frogs Finally

After frogs finally
and all at once
(as if by contract or with
music charts) stop their
maniacal, charming belch-fest,
night air's suddenly
full of unused echoes,

which will stay for next
night's sprung chorus.

At this time, there will be
no statement regarding
hominids listening to frogs
while both have occupied
Time's gorges. Instead

we suggest you wonder
how it feels and sounds
to be a wet frog croaking
among other croaking wet frogs,
goodnight, goodnight, goodnight!
Do sense yourself a part of that fest. 


hans ostrom 2018

Five-Syllable Aria

For him, opera is a world
where people converse
in shrieks, shouts, cries, and
wails. (Too much like his family.)

Even an operatic comedy
sounds like catastrophe to him.

Right away, the first notes,
opera is too much for him.
Instantly it exhausts him.
Defeated, he sleeps until

a sweet whisper in his ear
sings, "It's over. Let's go."
The five-syllable aria
transports his would.


hans ostrom 2018

A Composed Affair

I recall the affair
as clearly as if
it had happened a long
time ago, which it
did, but not before

starting as an impromptu,
developing into an etude,
going through a prelude
to get to some
energetic nocturnes,
with several scherzos,
rondos, and sarabands
included for good pleasure.

The affair ended
as if by composed
design, how refreshing.
The final note
was held but not
amplified or for long.


hans ostrom 2017

Poem for Strings and Saxophone

Yes, saw those attached stretched tendons. Make 'em yowl,
make 'em bleat, make them sweet. For you know
the playing is work: how many muscles in the hands,
wrists, back, and neck? How much instant discernment
in memory, eyesight, and ear-hearing? Now

your neurotransmitters need a break, so let
a saxophone stride in wearing a gold suit,
black shirt, and Falun red tie. Yes, please,
let the horn raise the subject of a steak-thick
fold of cash caught in a worn money-clip.

Bring them together now, brass
and class, robust and refined, all
intertwined.  The music ought
to be serious, funny, subtle, and crude
like something from that Satie dude.



hans ostrom 2016

The Fiddler's Response

The absorption of music operates
individualistically, in spite of
communal structures, hitocracies,
group performance, and ubiquitous
corporate dispensers. Thus

was the violin-player in a four-
person acoustic jazz band induced
by the present music and her
personal compunctions to play
with her hair, twisting it with
one finger, then looking at it

as if it were a clue; this, as
she waited (was she waiting?)
for a guitarist to complete
his wailing interval.


* "wailing interval"--sometimes
used by Duke Ellington to refer to
an instrumental solo


hans ostrom 2016

Duke, Again

With Ellington, never
just one mood, ever
two or more.

State profoundly
something simple
but please

don't decorate.
Slip something
gut-bucket,

not quite profane
but close, into
urbane constructions.

Make smart choices.
Move efficiently
like a chess

assassin. The players
are the source:
so obvious, but

almost always
overlooked: Aristotle
understood. Remain

madly allergic
to cliche. Dodge in
and out of the fray.


hans ostrom 2015

Secret Music

The antennae of the snail receive
music as slowly as glaciers form thoughts.
Note by note, the music seeps in from
a station under the ocean.

--Whereas bumble bees jam. They
syncopate the wing-buzz rhythms
and growl lyrics into stamens.
O, sexy women, O, befuddled men,

there's music out there
few have never heard.



hans ostrom 2015

"Every Flutist"

Every flutist
owns a cloud
and keeps it tethered
to a chair
with an invisible
strand of hair.

Every flutist
hides a whisper
in the basement
of a melody
and a sigh
in the cambrium
of a tree.

Every flutist
scribbles
a prescription
on the air
with a certain
enigmatic flair.


Hans Ostrom 2015

"During Music," by Hans Ostrom