|
Howard Grady Brown
[August 2006.]
Strauss claimed he could set a glass of beer
to music. Oh, you hophead, Richard!
“Good beer cannot travel far.”
Thus spake Zarathustra.
The man was wrong. Bottled Strauss
uncaps somewhere every day. Heady stuff:
the putsch and schove of Munich halls
would challenge any hero’s life. Till
the mirrored owl’s merry pranks return
to Germany, I chug alone at home.
The brew’s high fidelity
goes well with something out of Italy,
and Don Juan delivers all night long.
Next door, the shadowless Frau,
my unsightly neighbor, pumps up the volume.
Her hip-hop, a local brew, raps:
malt with distorted amplitude.
I retreat to headphones, drink deep,
and tilt at windmills the laser reads.
The variations on a nightly theme
convert from a rondo-stream of
zeroes and ones, and expire, transfigured.
A domestic garbage-truck symphony
awakens me to a morning
that does not become Elektra.
As for last songs, Kein Bier vor Vier.
|