Smetana
       

When an ear creates its own private pitch,
its own cathedral-tone without clapper, bell,

or breath at the end that is the beauty of bells,
it is not music. It is desire stripped of its song,

the wire of its shield, the body of its deep sleep.
It is wind in the stationary trees of winter.

But say we take that note, that exhaustion turned
fever turned dawn of some impending deafness,

and hang it in the rafters of the string quartet.
It is not music. Nor is it alone. Discrete,

yes, and thus capable of yearning. Likewise
the man who watches a woman cradle her cello

with his suffering inside and hears nothing is
discrete, confined, afflicted, and capable of movement.

He is neither music, nor cello, nor broken body
alone, but in dialogue with those he cannot hear.

And among them, himself, not as he was or is,
but as he might be. As music is when it is passing.

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Copyright © 2015 Bruce Bond All rights reserved
from 32 Poems
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission