Monday, April 5, 2010

What Anne Brought and Left

Its strains, recognizable, identifiable.  I felt 
superb, erudite, an epiphany of knowing.  I had 
grown used to hearing it throughout autumn 
and into winter, piping out of my roommate's 
cumbersome behemoth of a tape player, which 
she had lugged along with her postage-stamp 
sized underwear all the way from Switzerland 
to our cozy dorm room sheltered by the Pine 
Grove.  But that night I stood, home for break, 
doing laundry in the basement, radio on, my 
parents somewhere upstairs, naive about their 
daughter's impending genius, and there was the 
music, lovely, sad, hopeful, tragic, something 
dark I had come to know over myriad games 
of backgammon, while drinking Russian Caravan 
tea that had steeped in a pale yellow teapot.  
Folding clothes, I looked up, amazed, conscious, 
and called out to no one in particular, "Mozart's Requiem."

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