Les Barricades Mystérieuses

I'm so proud of my mom! Here is her poem on a piece by Francois Couperin, published in this summer's Georgia Review and recently posted on Poetry Daily.

http://poems.com/poem.php?date=14444y:

Please listen to the music this is based on:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZXzuIsxb64


The Barricade

François Couperin must have loved some girl
and known how to argue, how to twine fingers
in a dance—how one idea will break onto another
like waves that rear and kneel, how the sea's curls must rise
in time to the moon, how a girl can kiss back.

This is what you hear in music that turns
with the steadiness of a merry-go-round,
the ornate horses ready to burst from their glass
bodies and race each other across a hill
in their real shapes—they are that excited,
ready to bolt except for this composition
the composer called a "musical barricade,"
this maze with turnings through a trimmed
suspense: the coy vistas of old boxwood,
this fond and winding argument designed to hold
a loved one fast and keep those horses,
those good horses, from galloping away.

LaWanda Walters

The Georgia Review
Summer 2009