Buxtehude's Daughter

Father would say I thought Orlando Lasso

Was an epic on the old age of a hero –

He teased me horribly. But he also tried

To leave me safe and settled when he died,

Offering my hand in marriage to the best

Who came to take his seat – the musical test,

Then me, the princess of this fairy tale.

That's what he thought. To me, I was for sale

Like fading goods in a window, in our house

Sewing, to show I’d make a model spouse.

When Handel came, he found me elderly.

He was eighteen and I was twenty-eight –

The sad arithmetic of too soon, too late …

I wonder if he ever thinks of me

At night, in London. He liked my soup that day.

Strange to know someone famous far away.

Then young Bach came. He was so keen to learn

He overstayed, and I began to burn

Like a ripe candle in my room alone

Along the corridor. Which he must have known.

Father and he became so close. He knew

The parent's hope – but never called me Du.

Three months I was for sale and was not bought.

Though absent in the wood of musical thought

He must have seen my shape, at meals, because

Unwittingly I fired him for his cousin,

The young and merry one who sang.

And then

Father no longer walked, but flew to heaven.

I still kept house, now for his deputy.

They offered him the job and he took me,

That autumn. So I moved into the bed

Where I was born, and gave my maidenhead

In the same place – where I expect to die.

We have a cat and dog. Johann and I

Named them from operas he composed before

We met: Medea, the Euripidean whore,

And Alaric, the Gothic king. Johann

Christian Schieferdecker ist mein Mann,

Natürlich jünger – just four years, this time.

And do you ask if we had children? Nein.

I made the Elders give Johann more pay:

Organists wear their trouser-seats away –

All that sliding along the bench, you know.

When he plays Bach, he sweats a bit. I glow.