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✦ 51 ✦ The Substitute I live with your picture, the one with the laughter, The one with the wrists that are snapping with glee, That one where the fingers will never stop wringing, The one with the guests and the ghosts and the grief. With crackle of logs and Rakoczy bravados, And glass chandeliers and the glasses of guests, Where over the Steinway it races and leaps From knuckles and roses and bones and rosettes. Where hair all disheveled, and tucked in your sash The bud of a tea rose—intoxicant scent, As waltzing to glory, you bite on your kerchief In torment, and joking, with barely a breath. Where crushing the rind in your hand as you swallow A mandarin’s icy cold slivers, to soar Back through the curtain, where chandelier girded, The hall reeks of sweat from the waltzing once more. Thus whirlwind on a bet might come, To take the steam in stride, And thorns and murk, as Muslims would, Not narrowing its eyes. Declaring that no mountain sigh, No madly raging steed, But only roses at your side Go round at racing speed. ✦ 52 ✦ Oh no, not that, no mountain sigh, No stamping hoofbeat’s roar, But only, only what’s inside A kerchief—nothing more. And only what the lace and heat, The scent, the sash, the dance In whirling time to cyclone beat Can carry off entranced. To dreams—to laughter from the heart, To drunkenness and cheers, For spinning sacks to gape upon, To tears . . . to tears! Rakoczy bravados: music of Franz Liszt. ...

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