This constanza was written for One Single Impression Prompt #36: Disguise and is based on the death of Mozart. I was inspired to write this after attending a performance of Mozart’s “Requiem Mass in D Minor, K 626″. Apparently, Franz Count von Walseeg had anonymously commissioned the piece from Mozart, but was planning to pass it off as his own composition for his late wife, Anna. Enjoy.
-Nicole
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This Requiem has taken hold;
poison courses within my veins
and I languish in terror’s chains.
Night draws near and my skin grows cold;
sunlight distant now fades away.
The Count will have his mask today.
Through my fingers this sullen gold
that cannot mollify my eyes -
it, the reward for his disguise,
slips away to a fate untold
and with it, my soul wrapped in notes
and sent across the Styx in boats.
Inside Elysian fields enrolled
my soul will be once I’ve arrived
and music’s bliss will be revived.
Written 11/2/08
© 2008 Nicole Nicholson. All Rights Reserved.
Beautiful, with all the richness of brocade by candlelight… Interesting rhyming pattern. too!
Great rhyme and imagery!
And this is a differnt character in the Mozart drama than Molieri…sheesh, one more reason to not be a genius!
Thanks for this beautiful, mournful impression on the prompt. Definitely felt elegiac….
while the poem stands, beautifully, on its own, thanks so much for the interesting context.
Nice job of a difficult form. I particularly love Requiem masses. You were able to make your images spin a tapestry of a dark time and place.
Very nice – Concise…
What a fascinating take on the prompt. Well done. Amazing that one whose own life carried such turmoil could produce such stunningly exquisite melody.
I enjoyed that.. Amazing strength!
a quite unexpected & darkly beautiful poem
Thank you, everyone, for your kind words and compliments.
I have always been fascinated with Mozart, and while the movie portrayed him as extremely intelligent, gifted, and at times irreverent, I wonder about his own personal darkness. That darkness seems to come across in the requiem Mass (besides the fact that, Hello, it’s a Requiem Mass)…so I wanted to explore that a bit more.
This is the first time I have tried to constanza form. I was fascinated with it when I first discovered it over on Poefusion and have been wanting to try it since.
Thanks, everyone, for stopping by.
-Nicole
Dear Nicole,
I invented the Constanza form and I was very impressed with your poem. Thank you
Děkuji, že mne za mou rodinu nehaníte a nepranýřujete, snad jsme panu Mozartovi příliš neublížili. Hezký den. P.M.O.Walsegg