I’m rapt in Marilyn Horne’s angel-tone
mezzo-soprano entrancing packed rows
of Teatro alla Scala—her one
last song: “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair” flows
through me. And now I’m crying, recalling
Stephen Foster, stripped by publishers’ greed,
staggering from days of fever, falling
in his Bowery hotel room, head bleed-
ing from shattered wash basin. Hours will pass
before he’s
carried to Bellevue, dying
in three days at age thirty-seven—his
wallet lumped with Civil War scrip lying
against a single wrinkled paper shard
with lone scratched line: “Dear friends and gentle
hearts…”
Roger Armbrust
June 7, 2014
