Anne M Carson - On becoming Anna Magdalena Bach

Anne M Carson’s poetry has been published internationally, and widely in Australia. Recent publications include Massaging Himmler: A Poetic Biography of Dr Felix Kersten (Hybrid, 2019), and Two Green Parrots (Ginnindera Press, 2019). She has initiated a number of poetry-led social justice projects. She is currently a PhD candidate at RMIT where her project includes poetic biographies of two creative women – Anna Magdalena Bach, a ‘flawless’ soprano (according to her husband, Johann Sebastian Bach) and George Sand, prolific French novelist.

On becoming Anna Magdalena Bach

Twenty years a Wilcken, under father’s roof, in a family of Wilckens then overnight

I become a Bach under the roof of another

in a family of Bachs. At the market they say

Guten tag Frau Bach and I turn to see who they address. Me – a frau? Seasons pass before I know myself in this other guise: Frau Cantor Bach.

Anna Magdalena talks about erster und zweiter Schlaf

Our nightly ritual for the erster Schlaf is to go to our bed not long after dusk.

Exhausted we immediately fall asleep then wake around midnight, to pray, talk about the coming day and play the games spouses do. In the early days, keen to snatch

moments of tenderness from the everyday maelstrom, we would talk, wanting to know whom this person was whom I had wed. Johann would hum a few bars, little tunes which came into his head more easily than words. Then I had to sing the next few bars sensing where the music could go – not so easy for me at first, but with practice I improved. Lying in his arm-crook feeling the hum-vibration deep in his chest; under the kind auspices of the Almighty, I knew as perfect contentment as possible in this human life. Back and forth

our hums went, singing the felicity of our connection. Sometimes we made harmonies and counter-points that soared in a night-time language of our own devising. Around 2am, we fell silent once more, at one with each other, the created world, and our Lord. Then, head-long we tumbled into zweiter Schlaf.

The Gift of Thee

Other times I wake after our erster Schlaff

my reach for him is full of ardour and affection.

Then the moonlit room fills with our want of each other and our prayers become bodily. My soul

praises the Lord for the gift of thee, I whisper in his ear, voice choked with love and longing.

* In the 1700s in Europe, sleep was divided into two phases, first and second sleep.

View from my window, photograph by Mark Ulyseas.