Lohengrin

By Carey Jobe

Prelude to Lohengrin (2nd Plate) - Henri Fantin-Latour

Watch closely, you’ll glimpse him:
—nights, lodged in a two-star
downtown German hotel,
a black silhouette by a third-
floor window, hushed eavesdropper
as drunks, haggling prostitutes
bark phrases of shattered glass
—hungry, holed at the local
Burger King, scoping faces, tasting
a sameness that’s not quite right
—mornings, a not-quite-moth
anonymous dress-green figure
backed to a wall, he waits to catch
Strassenbahn shuttle to drab-olive
military necessities, barracks,
commissary, PX, fence-barbed
mimicries of longed-for homes.
—So for ten days.  The tenth,
drifting nowhere, he spots a flyer
reciting May’s upcoming theater,
reads, “Sonntag: Lohengrin,
Romantisches Oper…”  Not once,
except in his mind, has he seen
an opera.

          The theater, like mind,
holds crosshatching voices, a stage
a mauve curtain’s ripples hide.
The gowned, spangled, elderly Duchess
he sits by, an ornate relic of
outdated assumptions, wears a smile
for everyone, language even he
conv…