Poeta Doctus

A friend brought to mind today his meeting a now-mutual friend, musician Zsolt Sőrés. I had the luck to collaborate with Sőrés and his co-musician Zsolt Kovacs in Budapest, an aspect of which is memorialized in the first part of the poem I share below, from Ladonian Magnitudes. (As usual, the formatting here messes up the lineation: the original is written in tercets).

Pisces

“If our child is born in February or March it will be a Fish.”

Laszlo told us Tibor’d invited us to either his place or The Fish Restaurant

& Laszlo consistent with our unanimous consensus told him The Fish Restaurant

which miffed him a little but then why offer us the choice?—“You don’t do that!”

Besides he has a Stammtisch there

there’s always a table for him

“Of course, sir, just this way!”

So that day Kovács is supposed to arrive around five to record “Trabant” on DAT in his Trabant

because Tuesday after a solid three quarters of a litre of Tokaj, some beers before, innumerable Unicums, and even a little hash? then two big double vodkas

after the rehearsal for Wednesday night I spouted Marinneti glossolalia driving back to Laszlo’s in Kovàcs’s Trabant no one could stop me

So we went to the Tokaj bar Laszlo and I where they ladled half a deci of sweet and half a deci of dry into a glass for each of us drunk down in one go for the effect of a double martini

Then back up to Laszlo’s for a little more hash, no beer! vodka palinka Unicum whiskey two generic Gravol

Kovács an hour and a half late so I’m lying on the front balcony when the Two Zsolts arrive

Petra tells me she and Laszlo looked at each other knowingly as I swayed pale out the door

I remember raving the way I did the night before and arriving at The Fish Restaurant by surprise before seven

Sitting with Tibor and Laszlo who looked at each other and in Hungarian agreed I couldn’t eat with them

Ordering me a mineral water and putting me out on the balcony

Where I got up telling Petra I just need some air

And wander out into Buda’s streets looking for a bench

I remember Petra coming up and seeing how I was sitting tilting back and forth on a little wall over the Duna

The taxi arriving and Petra and Laszlo helping me up supporting me on each arm the taxi driver saying “Later.”

“Get up before they call the police!”

“Should I get an ambulance?”—“No, no, he’s just had too much to drink.”

And Kovács coming in his Trabant, me reeling beside him

Rolling down the window on the way and puking a great orange arc

Kovács tells me it was as if as he made the U-turn in front of The Fish Restaurant

everything I’d drunk sloshed out

One waiter pointed “Look! He’s doing it again!”

From Bremervörde we drove north to Otterndorf at the Elbe’s mouth

In the sun Matjes with raw onion on a bun and a plate of crispy gold Pommes with a big dab of mayonnaise

On the picnic table outside the strand café landside of the dike

Seaside a briny brown tide covered the sand and washed up cold over and drained through honeycombed red bricks enforcing the shore we walked on

Two black-suited windsurfers rode out fast crazy as the two boys splashing in the swimming pond just left of lunch

The sky painterly with grey-rain and sun-bleached clouds framing low sea daisy yellow mist and high blue

The Gasthaus we aimed at for an early supper closed so we drove in to Otterndorf

Brick houses cool sienna tomato rusted in early dusk

Even cobbled clean streets narrow as in Hamburg or Holland

A sample of Italian absinth and a flask of Grobmuter’s Apfelsaft in a gift shop just around the corner from the Ratskellar—“Danke, Mutti!” (Danke, Renate, for the absinthe spoon!)

A Norwegian acquavit before a litre of German beer and three rich Matjes filets Hausfrauen Art with a creamy apple onion celery relish and Bratkartoffeln punctuated by a bitter

A soft chocolate-dipped Eis eaten up quickly melting out the bottom of the cone

The way back musculature uncomfortable on bone-rack, aching joints, and threatening cramps

In bed sweat wet uncontrollable shivers chatter teeth and fingertips tingle numb

Every joint sore unable to lie still three seconds

Eyes rolling in a reeling lolling head

Delirious poetic prayers to Apollo in the name of his son Asclepius to shake from a leafy laurel branch drops blessed by Morpheus to cool my head and just let me sleep

Finally making myself puke three times about three in the morning