A Lesser Triumph
Plaudite, amici, comedia finita est.
—Ludwig van Beethoven
Yesterday I remembered applause. Whole rooms
would erupt with it, the people holding all that energy
inside their liquid bodies like geysers ready to burst.
It would start with the smack of one hand against
another, the expulsion of air between the flatness
of palm and palm so sudden that the shock would
travel briefly faster than sound, the kinetic energy
of that singular impulse reaching the drum
of a neighbor’s ear and through the ossicles,
rippling around the little hairs of the cochlea
and all the canals vibrating the vestibular nerve,
sparking electrochemical waves over axon and synapse
and down to the hands, which too would clap
in confirmation, relieved at the release, each
neighbor’s two neighbors of neighboring hands
expanding the blast like the neutron burst
in a fission reactor until the whole body of bodies
would explode, lifting their backs by their limbs
and out of their seats, the lungs pushed through
the lips and the teeth into whistles and hoots,
their caps sometimes blown clear to the ceiling
as humanity shook, and then settled down finally
like the smoke that settles in the valley late at night,
lingering among the silent trunks of the trees.
Plaudite, amici, comedia finita est.
—Ludwig van Beethoven
Yesterday I remembered applause. Whole rooms
would erupt with it, the people holding all that energy
inside their liquid bodies like geysers ready to burst.
It would start with the smack of one hand against
another, the expulsion of air between the flatness
of palm and palm so sudden that the shock would
travel briefly faster than sound, the kinetic energy
of that singular impulse reaching the drum
of a neighbor’s ear and through the ossicles,
rippling around the little hairs of the cochlea
and all the canals vibrating the vestibular nerve,
sparking electrochemical waves over axon and synapse
and down to the hands, which too would clap
in confirmation, relieved at the release, each
neighbor’s two neighbors of neighboring hands
expanding the blast like the neutron burst
in a fission reactor until the whole body of bodies
would explode, lifting their backs by their limbs
and out of their seats, the lungs pushed through
the lips and the teeth into whistles and hoots,
their caps sometimes blown clear to the ceiling
as humanity shook, and then settled down finally
like the smoke that settles in the valley late at night,
lingering among the silent trunks of the trees.
