In 1945 in Allied-occupied Austria, Anton Webern was shot by accident
because a patrol thought he was a Nazi.
The joke being that he was a Nazi.
Every note he wrote was an elegy for itself
and broader Germany
distilled to a purity of decadence
like a man shot by accident for being himself.
He kept giving Jewish musicians work.
He kept writing bagatelles that swooned into their own decadence.
Oh, Germany! Your mountains graceful as a flounder flapping!
Oh, Austria!
Your intellect
makes my manly tears
stagger like Young Werther
conked on the head
with a slide-whistle
up his snoot.
Alack.
Not very Wagner.
Webern’s music was banned. He got fired. He got called a Bolshevik.
Also he called other people Bolsheviks
like in that wonderful quartet for tenor saxophone, clarinet, piano, and violin
where the instruments all hobble and plunk after each other,
in a broken tangled muddle
but this time it’s for turning around in place to get a grip so you can throw yourself in an oven.
“It’s only the superior old German culture that can save this world
from the demoralized condition into which it has been thrown,” he said.
He also said, “Even Schoenberg, had he not been a Jew,
would have been quite different!”
Which is certainly true.
He wouldn’t have had to flee Austria, as a for instance.
Webern was a man of his time
much like his friends Schoenberg and Berg
who could have told him, “don’t be a fucking Nazi, Anton,”
if he had asked, probably.
He didn’t ask. He took a cigar
and went out close to curfew into that superior old German culture
that had been cleansed of Jews and of Schoenberg
and of Webern compositions.
Then the bullet found him, like in his lieder
“Gleich und gleich,” in which the early spring flower is discovered by an early bee.
“Die müssen wohl beide
Für einander sein.”
The joke being that the soprano and the piano each follow their own bumbling, dissonant path
the notes scurrying on after the voice has stopped.
They weren’t made for each other
but they joined together,
like death pollinated with death.
Shoah Bonus Round
The whole point of a skull
is to hit other people with the skull.
Why even bother with atrocity
if it doesn’t lead down a blood slick path
to more and better atrocities?
The hollow place in your heart,
the gutted cavern retching dirt,
is our heritage of righteousness
shining grey like murder.
Our Code
Our Code says read the Code.
Our Code says we all must follow the Code.
Our Code says I (that’s me)
pull you on like an old boot. Our Code says
you (that’s you) open like a shoe into which a foot
(that’s our Code)
flexes like a great Code. Our Code says
we are impactful together as we stride towards the Code
my great wart writes across the inside of your core competency.
Our Code says we are stronger together
like a sternum cracked so the marrow
can water our Code. Our Code says coroners like crows
squat in panopticons like thorn trees, implementing our Code.
Our Code says listen to their beaks clacking about our Code.
Our Code says thank you for internalizing our Code.
Our Code says thank you for being internalized by our Code
Thank you.
