Damned Vile Race, by George Guida

​Damned Vile Race

The silver-maned baritone can never sing this air
since he has never understood why what we love dies,
why his constant headache won’t subside like a wave of
strings as he finds his daggered daughter cast to the muck
so he cries out

so he cries out
not for mercy but a tone he’s chased through this cosmos
of auroral curtains, through these blinding hemispheres
whose thunder falls on his ears like a sentence’s song
the Virtues composed in a key they’ve long forsaken.

If woman be fickle it is the curse of being
human, being subject to a duke’s dominion
over all a baleful gaze surveys from a barouche
and if this squire be cruel it is the curse of knowledge
he can’t escape

he can’t escape
his vanity and urges, his tenor’s privilege
to duel with gods who have no need of courage to face
a sudden end, to accept the shockwaves of applause
for man’s capacity to tolerate awareness
of cadenza

of cadenza
the baritone alone can deliver from off stage
as he removes his costume to burn it in the wings
where he flies to the bosom of today, a country
free of tyranny, of timpani, of composer’s
time out of time

so he cries out
so he cries out

George Guida

This poem was written in response to a painting by Andrey Shishkin (Russia, 2013). We regret we were unable to contact the painter for permission, and so have included a scene from the opera on which the painting was based. You can view the artwork here. 

George Guida is the author of seven books, including four collections of poems, most recently Pugilistic (WordTech Editions) and The Sleeping Gulf (Bordighera Press).


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