After the Fugue in B Minor

by Brett Rutherford

You have emerged again from the fugue,

a phantom stepped out of counterpoint, at burst

of ominous pedal point, your ululating step

fringed with chromatics — I thought I had lost

your tenor in all that tumult, or in those rules

that ban our moving in parallel steps

or ever singing in unison,

but there you are, out-of-place,

a metaphor for lutes and panegyric hymns,

my untouched cipher whom I would decorate

with myrtle. Defy, if you dare, this

     separateness

that only a Lutheran cantor could

     want to impose.

Ah, you are gone again. I have lost you.

Our voices never cross; we move in our permitted

range, remotely similar, earthbound alike,

my bass aspiring to your fanciful curves,

you in the middle voice, keyboards above,
I in the plodding pedal, trapped below.

We stay alien as much to one another

as they who soar soprano must seem

to both of us. A fugue has a cruel beauty,

as strict as military order. Meet me here

at midnight, my elusive friend! Do not

fail to appear. The cantor will be asleep,

the minister well into his ale-house slumber.

Just us, and the organist,

in the dark of the moon. The bellows-boy

will be sworn to secrecy, and pump away!

And we, we shall be free to scamper and play,

chase one another and even embrace

in chord after chord, and leaping intervals,

all rules abandoned. A Toccata! A Toccata!