Opera

Sitting by the stereo in headphones, Browsing through the pile of old LPs I rescued from a never-opened closet, I gave myself the doubtful education That opera offers, and that moralists Had warned against for generations, till The louder styles of musical rebellion Made arias sound as innocent as culture. Because I didn’t know this, I knew better; From prostitutes and libertines, I heard The secret of the sweetness of transgression. Love, which I had thought was purely good–– Benevolent and matrimonial–– Now showed its other faces: Violetta’s Orgasmic hymns to folly and desire, “Delight and cross” of the reluctant heart; Donna Elvira’s joy in her abjection, In being dumped and used and dumped again. Was this what Mrs. Brown had meant to teach That afternoon when, bored or unprepared, She played the class a tape of Amadeus, A missionary for the higher things? The lesson took, but not as she intended: The high is nothing but the lowest, turned Into a kind of decorous abstraction, A voice distended with perversity, The melting tone of something giving way.