Making Mortals Feel Downbeat Poem by gershon hepner

“When you get home, ” said Bernard Shaw
to Jascha Heifetz, “close the doors.
Perfection of technique ignore,
and make a few mistakes because
the gods can’t handle your perfection––
they need to see you, too, have flaws.”
But errors weren’t his predilection,
which you can hear as still he soars
on disks, not fallible like mortals
who daily fall because they stumble.
Gods hate perfection, too, behind the portals,
complaining men like Heifetz make them humble,
while those of us who are less perfect please
the gods with whom we don’t, because we can’t, compete,
while those who do what’s very hard with ease
make less inspired mortals feel downbeat.

Bernard Shaw advised Jascha Heifetz to take out his violin each night before he went to bed and play some mistakes because his perfection made the gods angry. On KUSC on 10/9/09 Alan Chapman quoted Shaw, leading me to polish this poem which I first wrote in 1997.



8/10/97,10/9/09