Gone & Gone

Symphonie Fantastique

41 Symphonie Fantastique He loved the grand gesture and brave theatric, the plunging toward home at dawn, like Berlioz stalking the streets of Paris in search of his Miss Smithson. “I had longed for these moments at the Symphony, a yearning like the violin’s single note placed against the tense groan of the bass, a crescendo of pounding tympani that would mimic my heart & the racing, glorious moment I touched your hand— but you were not even there, & all that had seemed splendent turned distant & dark . . . In my room, when the candle is almost burned down & the wax lies pooled & heavy by my head I watch the reflections on the wall & wait for sunrise to come & knock me away . . . O you raw dealer, you sad spealer of sideshow feats & houndings of the soul! Such circumlocution, such angelic deceit! Your little lusts mount on the thigh I long to kiss . . . 42 I have searched & searched for you, I have spread the night wide open & been kicked aside like a cur— I have craved with the desperate mouth of a river flooding its banks as melted snow feeds desire, swollen in the last few moments of show.” ...