Leopold
by David Mortimer
It’s alright Leopold you can relax now
There’s no need to plan another tour
Everyone can see you weren’t exaggerating
Everyone agrees your son’s a star
And you don’t need leave from Salzburg anymore
With the Prince-Archbishop gone from power
With Colloredo gone (relax) your son’s the power
Who’s taken all before him so that now
Your surname’s not your surname anymore
(More ways than you could advertise on tour
Watching and hearing the child star)
But a byword for music and mastery past exaggerating
For beauty and genius past hope of exaggerating
The whole world knows his power
And follows the Mozart star
Even to praise or blame his father now
(Don’t laugh) for attitudes or incidents or risks on tour
To royal houses that don’t matter anymore
Leopold it doesn’t matter anymore
What anyone or Wolfgang tries exaggerating
In home town service and on European tour
You’ve done your best with your employer and every other power
So prodigies and parents then till now
Can hate or hail you as a guiding star
From your first joy in your infant star
(The play of fear) till after you couldn’t teach him anymore
As child or adolescent or as adult now
With warning and advising and exaggerating
Dangers of travel and marriage and power
By letter when you couldn’t be on tour
Like when your wife instead of you on tour
Died past planning in Paris leaving the young star
All alone and all grown up to power
Leopold you just can’t do this anymore
With the Prince-Archbishop dead and no exaggerating
You and your son more than two centuries dead now
Leopold the tour is over you can rest now
With all your family with the star raised to a higher power
Needing no strategies for exaggerating anymore
David Mortimer is working on a third collection of poems to follow Red in the Morning (Bookends 2005) and Fine Rain Straight Down (Friendly Street New Poets Eight Wakefield 2003). Mortimer lives in Adelaide. For further information please visit the South Australian Writers’ Centre website.