The Innisfree Poetry Journal

www.innisfreepoetry.org

by Jean Nordhaus

BREAD OF HEAVEN

                        Time/Life: Schubert and his Music

O, the buns, the buns, his fragrant loaves and Leckerli,

strudels and Lebkuchen, little frosted sugar cakes

set out on the banquette like babies in a row.

And when he came to me, flushed from the heat

of his ovens, smelling of yeast and chocolate,

white as a miller with flour on his shoes,

when he wooed me with marzipan

and braided crullers, odors issuing

from his shop in waves of rapture, who

could resist? O, comfort me with Linzertorte.

I've had an easy life, bread and meat on the table

a roof above my head, a kind man who loves me . . .

but, O, I've grown fat, fat, and sometimes

when scents of morning brötchen

penetrate my sleep like tremolos of lost love,

I think of that earnest, bespectacled cherub,

his head haloed with unruly curls—

nothing inside but harmonies and dotted half-notes—

how truly I sang for him

like the little bird that whistles sweet, sweet, sweet

outside my window.