Everything is One

By Heart

I went to one of Sofie Layton’s wonderful workshops around this work and ended up contributing a poem to the exhibition.  This is not it…but a sideways take I found during my research.

His Heart

The earth is suffocating. Swear to make them cut me open, so that I won’t be buried alive.

Chopin on his death bed, 1849

 

Smuggled by his sister

back into his homeland

past Russian guards

sealed in a jar of cognac

interred in a Warsaw crypt

conferred on an SS officer

who admired his music

returned to the Holy Cross

examined for cause of death:

pericarditis, chronic tuberculosis.