Andrew Mulvania

THE GREATEST POEM I EVER WROTE

No one will ever read
the greatest poem I ever wrote
because I lost it; of course, the same holds
true for the worst poem I ever wrote because
no one reads poetry anymore, but
that’s beside the point; I’m trying
to tell you about the greatest poem
I ever wrote: It was about the composer
Gustav Mahler and the circumstances
surrounding the composition of his 6th
symphony, the one that became known
as his “Tragic Symphony” for the way
it seemed to represent and even foretell
the three “hammer blows of fate” that
would befall the great composer
around the same time, those being:
the death of his daughter, Putzi, from
scarlet fever; the diagnosis of the heart condition
that would eventually kill him; and, finally,
his dismissal as the head of the Staatsoper
In Vienna because of the growing scourge
of antisemitism. The poem opens with Mahler
returning to his beloved composing hut
at Maiernigg, on the banks of the Wörthersee,
after an exhausting winter of conducting
at the Staatsoper. He sits in the hut reflecting
on all the taxing events of the winter, finally
at peace again and able to free his shackled
spirit in the vast sonic structures of his music
and take flight. Of course, I wasn’t really
talking about Mahler in this poem, was I?;
nor, exactly, am I talking about him now.
I’m talking about the greatest poem I ever wrote
which you will never see or read, because I,
myself, suffered a hammer blow of fate, or
several of them, three or possibly four, ok five,
shortly after the composition of the poem,
in which I went temporarily crazy, lost
my job, my marriage, my home, and
the one piece of paper on which that poem—
the greatest poem that I ever wrote—
was printed. The computer on which this poem
was written sits completely dead in a black
computer bag on a shelf in my garage
like the cloth-draped coffin of Gustav Mahler
and I truly don’t know if I’ll ever bother
to try to get it working again and recover
the poem—you know, the greatest poem I ever wrote.
For now, then, you’ll just have to take my word for it:
see the slush-covered streets of Vienna in winter,
see the endless months spent endlessly rehearsing
Beethoven’s Fidelio with an uncooperative soprano
till the arrival of spring, and then, finally, summer;
see the great Mahler, in his composing hut; hear
the treicheln and glocken on the necks of the alpine
cows, their metallic jangling in the crisp mountain air,
a maid bringing the Maestro a late breakfast up the stone path,
a summer storm now building over the Wörthersee.

Andrew Mulvania is the author of a collection of poems, Also in Arcadia, published by the Backwaters Press (an imprint of The University of Nebraska Press). Recent poems have appeared in Chicago Quarterly Review and Smartish Pace. He has twice been a writer-in-residence at the Chautauqua Institute and was awarded an Individual Creative Artists Fellowship in Poetry from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. He lives in Columbia, Missouri, and teaches in the Writing Across the Curriculum program for University of Maryland Global Campus. Here is a link to more autobiographical info: https://www.missourireview.com/people/andrew-mulvania/