Duet
Some struggle to hold my wrist
in separation from its bridge,
and the E-string peg had special
panics attached. I was having
to root through cadavers left
in the storeroom, looking for
a substitute after the snap.
That was the dream–wound too tight
and then it draws a perfect line
of blood, wherever its lash
should fall.
Not that I made it
happen–I always deferred about
finding my naturals, given half
an accidental, or chance, but it had
to spring apart even as he tuned it.
Bad fate for those lost instruments
to become my nervous salvage
(I thought myself a surgeon then,
before the Browning got me,
and I tenderly removed the spare
cord from a long-unplayed heart
as if it was my future), and with
tremored hands I went to tightening
it, getting it taut, taut as I dared,
and always having to turn it further–
until, with mercy, the thing was done.
It wasn't wounds which stopped me
in the end. I had a flat, prosaic hatred
for playing my scales. Yet here you have
some love–some fear. It's all for violins.
Some struggle to hold my wrist
in separation from its bridge,
and the E-string peg had special
panics attached. I was having
to root through cadavers left
in the storeroom, looking for
a substitute after the snap.
That was the dream–wound too tight
and then it draws a perfect line
of blood, wherever its lash
should fall.
Not that I made it
happen–I always deferred about
finding my naturals, given half
an accidental, or chance, but it had
to spring apart even as he tuned it.
Bad fate for those lost instruments
to become my nervous salvage
(I thought myself a surgeon then,
before the Browning got me,
and I tenderly removed the spare
cord from a long-unplayed heart
as if it was my future), and with
tremored hands I went to tightening
it, getting it taut, taut as I dared,
and always having to turn it further–
until, with mercy, the thing was done.
It wasn't wounds which stopped me
in the end. I had a flat, prosaic hatred
for playing my scales. Yet here you have
some love–some fear. It's all for violins.
