West Side Story Echoes
For enigmatic, oblique reasons, this Tuesday evening,
Bernstein and Sondheim's haunting song "Maria"
Whispers its dreamy melody, through fifty years of memory,
And I begin singing, behind my misty eyes, those exquisite lyrics,
Which first discovered me in my mid-teens,
When I, like Tony, in West Side Story,
Was edging, awkwardly, uneasily,
Into the growing complexities of life, love, longing, and loss:
"The most beautiful sound I've ever heard:
Maria, Maria, Maria, Maria...
All the beautiful sounds of the world, in a single word.
I've just met a girl named Maria,
And suddenly that name will never be the same to me —
Maria."
Gradually, as I hum, the name changes to Linda,
And I see the two of us when we were youth's protégés —
You in Brooklyn, not far from where the Jets and Sharks rumbled,
I in St. Louis, a thousand miles distant from Broadway —
Listening to, swooning over, this seductive song,
Feeling the inchoate intimacy of those two passional souls.
Could it be that, even then,
You and I were listening for each other, to each other,
Between those uniquely compelling lines
("All the beautiful sounds of the world, in two single words —
Linda, L.D."),
Hoping only that, one day, we might transcend the fate
Of Tony and Maria,
Come unto each other, in a covenant of unsunderable love?
03/01/11 - (1)
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