Tom Aitken
Nocturne
Schoenberg’s string sextet Transfigured Night:
lovers talking in a cold, bleak wood.
‘I bear a child, not yours.’ A shimmering chord,
muted and pale, gives sound to silent moonlight
and his acceptance sanctifies her act.
The concert over, going home by train
I hear a woman having to explain -
muttering the abrupt and spiteful fact -
she’s pregnant by her husband. The next stop;
her lover leaves. His fumbled, curt embrace
tells her that what they’d planned will not take place.
He passes in his ticket; at the top
of empty steps does not pause or look back.
A rumbling bridge; water under it; a black
moving shadow. Brakes; and from her station
she walks swiftly to a separate destination.
Page(s) 7
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