Men, Women and Ghosts

Stravinsky's Three Pieces "Grotesques", for String Quartet

       First Movement

   Thin-voiced, nasal pipes
   Drawing sound out and out
   Until it is a screeching thread,
   Sharp and cutting, sharp and cutting,
   It hurts.
   Whee-e-e!
   Bump!  Bump!  Tong-ti-bump!
   There are drums here,
   Banging,
   And wooden shoes beating the round, grey stones
   Of the market-place.
   Whee-e-e!
   Sabots slapping the worn, old stones,
   And a shaking and cracking of dancing bones;
   Clumsy and hard they are,
   And uneven,
   Losing half a beat
   Because the stones are slippery.
   Bump-e-ty-tong!  Whee-e-e!  Tong!
   The thin Spring leaves
   Shake to the banging of shoes.
   Shoes beat, slap,
   Shuffle, rap,
   And the nasal pipes squeal with their pigs' voices,
   Little pigs' voices
   Weaving among the dancers,
   A fine white thread
   Linking up the dancers.
   Bang!  Bump!  Tong!
   Petticoats,
   Stockings,
   Sabots,
   Delirium flapping its thigh-bones;
   Red, blue, yellow,
   Drunkenness steaming in colours;
   Red, yellow, blue,
   Colours and flesh weaving together,
   In and out, with the dance,
   Coarse stuffs and hot flesh weaving together.
   Pigs' cries white and tenuous,
   White and painful,
   White and—
   Bump!
   Tong!

       Second Movement

   Pale violin music whiffs across the moon,
   A pale smoke of violin music blows over the moon,
   Cherry petals fall and flutter,
   And the white Pierrot,
   Wreathed in the smoke of the violins,
   Splashed with cherry petals falling, falling,
   Claws a grave for himself in the fresh earth
   With his finger-nails.

       Third Movement

   An organ growls in the heavy roof-groins of a church,
   It wheezes and coughs.
   The nave is blue with incense,
   Writhing, twisting,
   Snaking over the heads of the chanting priests.
      'Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine';
   The priests whine their bastard Latin
   And the censers swing and click.
   The priests walk endlessly
   Round and round,
   Droning their Latin
   Off the key.
   The organ crashes out in a flaring chord,
   And the priests hitch their chant up half a tone.
      'Dies illa, dies irae,
      Calamitatis et miseriae,
      Dies magna et amara valde.'
   A wind rattles the leaded windows.
   The little pear-shaped candle flames leap and flutter,
      'Dies illa, dies irae;'
   The swaying smoke drifts over the altar,
      'Calamitatis et miseriae;'
   The shuffling priests sprinkle holy water,
      'Dies magna et amara valde;'
   And there is a stark stillness in the midst of them
   Stretched upon a bier.
   His ears are stone to the organ,
   His eyes are flint to the candles,
   His body is ice to the water.
   Chant, priests,
   Whine, shuffle, genuflect,
   He will always be as rigid as he is now
   Until he crumbles away in a dust heap.
      'Lacrymosa dies illa,
      Qua resurget ex favilla
      Judicandus homo reus.'
   Above the grey pillars the roof is in darkness.