This is a poem called "What the Music Wants,"
and it's dedicated to the memory of George Oppen.
"What the music wants is pod and tentacle.
The thing wiggling, wild as washed hair, spread.)
Is ourselves inserted within our own rhythms, wrapt, voluted,
that miracle of measure ascendant.
To stand, that there's somewhere to stand.
Marble over moorings, the scaffolds
now as if vanished and the steps, the floors: spoken forth.
To stand, stand there within sound
alone, that miracle is what the waters comb, and the bells,
beating, count.
Faint now over the waves in a garland of bells.
Is somewhere and wrapt in the bulb of its voices, are buoyant,
among."