WEBVTT

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The next, a much more decent
poem, is also about a woman.

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I was listening to
a student orchestra

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once playing a symphony of
Dvorak, the D minor symphony,

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and I was enraptured,
less by the music

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than by the long hair of the
student first violinist who

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was sitting just in
front of me and slightly

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above me in the canvas
chair, and the long hair

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was streaming down and sort
of trapped by the canvas.

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I found myself in the
symphony all the time

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having to jerk my
mind and my emotions

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back from this beautiful hair--
black hair-- to the symphony.

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And afterwards, I tried
to write about this,

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trying to relate the
life in this hair,

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to the art which
I had half heard.

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I've called this poem "Music
Student First Violinist."

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Anton, the name of course is
the Christian name of Dvorak.

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"Anton, all the black
notes of your symphony

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have swarmed into this
girl's allegro hair.

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Only the sluggered
breves and minims

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stay trapped by the bars
of the conductor's score.

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Pours frozen from her crown's
simple motif, a black cascade

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of glistening counterpoint to
where my gladly martyred eyes

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receive 10,000 quavers' barbed
and startling points, where

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the taut canvas
chairback lets it go.

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So near, I could
imprison with my hand

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the tempting weight
of that polyphony,

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tug her bent head back
from the weaving bow.

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There is a melody in
each separate strand,

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had I a chance to
study its great score;

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your temporal genius
rendered spatially.

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It is too short,
this timeless hour.

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The time to plumb its currents,
ponder how it weaves from

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the home minor to a major
key and brings it back,

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find if it joys or grieves in
its own ponderings of its own

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shut score, cannot be measured
by the metronome, or clock,

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or pulse, or carbon
in the rocks.

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I catch its shampoo's
faintly lurking theme

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and since the recent crisis--

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she attacked lacklustre strands
with demons in her hands.

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All with dismay-- will
it be right in time?

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She hacked its knots
before the fire.

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Tonight the whole performance
is in place, exact;

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blue-hazed with
static electricity.

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Her soul's in music,
music in her hair.

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Symphony of her
darkest attribute.

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She'll wrap it in a
scarf, and disappear.

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A tube will hold her
and her buried stream.

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Since art is less
than life, agree

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that I do right,
amidst the coughs,

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to hear no music but
its waist-long cataract.

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She will express you
just as passionately

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when all the white
notes of your symphony,

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unlike the black notes
dead within the score,

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in the rich coda of a
major key have swarmed

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into this girl's adagio hair.

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