The Fifer--a Boy with a Fife and Red Pants

It doesn't matter what Edouard Manet

chose to do with his eyes and hands

He could have created the same sensations

with clay or a dictionary full of words

Instead some great loneliness touched

his intellectual acuity to gain the silence

of his paints so well we can hear the note

It is what happens to the old we know

when they sink into their last years

One look from them and we are judged

to our depth in full knowledge

of our frailties and imperfections

so much so that we leave the old alone

in their smaller worlds with numb hands

In clay the old artist can feel every grain

instinctively knowing when to stop

pushing it around into the form he expects

Is there enough water and more questions

filter the information through fingers and eyes

more sensations than we know exist

until their crafts explode out of their worlds

Here, Manet, lets his subject stand alone

to hold a fife that normally rests

inside a brass tube that contains and protects

or is this brass tube not a protective item

instead being another instrument with which

the boy produces the sound his fellows

and the moment of marshal music required

The sash that hangs around his shoulder

is not simply one piece of cloth sewn together

but joined so neatly to a brass ring that seems

to be as polished as the buttons on his black tunic

brass that has always lead the parade

and yet there are no drummers or coronets

along side for Manet to exploit in equal daubs

It is shadow that lends the music to this boy

the dark line beneath the sash or behind

the fife on the palm of his hand so unnoticed

by everyone except the artist himself

who sees this light and the lack of it in oils

in unexpected overtones of the note being played

by the boy in the red pants and spat-covered shoes

Where is this piper besides the eye of the painter

though we are to believe his place is among

other musicians as his eyes betray the concentration

necessary when others vibrate columns of air

in unseen instruments standing at the side

of a road in a small French town where Manet

sees these scarlet pantaloons with a black stripe

The boy's cap is jauntily tilted to his right

perhaps like other boys in the invisible band

or just an expression of his own youthful style

this cap with red crown and gold braid

adds nothing to the music but is the child's crown

that Edouard provides to this youthful musician

playing unknown music on a ghost street

Barry G. Wick