When I was in eastern Canada last fall, I spent a lot of time listening to public radio while driving. I'd have to find a new station every 50 miles or so, and the programming alternated between jazz, French music, blues, opera, news and classical. Once, in New Brunswick, I think, I heard a story about a composer. I forget his last name, but his first was Fritz. The story was so intriguing, I dug out a scrap of paper and took notes while driving. I knew it would later become a poem.
Fritz the Unknown
10-27-05
His father wanted him to be anything
but a musician. He sent his son to watch sheep
somewhere in the country. His mind must have been filled
with song even then, even before he could play or write.
Suppose he hummed to the sheep.
When his failure at woolgathering became apparent,
his father tried again. Sheep require careful attention,
but fruit are another manner. (So he must have thought.)
Off went the son to grow oranges, but the silence
must have been overwhelming. No rutting, no chewing of cud.
After this first half of his life, spent in the pursuit
of failed ventures, his father relented.
Shipped to Leipzig, Finland, he began to learn.
He spent hours drinking schnapps with a man called Greek.
Eventually his fame was secured in Paris, of course.
So the story goes. But what must those years have grown
in him, through the gathering of sheep and oranges,
the solitary humming, symphonies composed on scraps
or in margins when he should have been calculating
the year’s profits. What songs he must have lived.
© 2005 April K Szuch
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