The Music-Stand

On the music-stand the music stands like softened skin.

And outside the peony, burning with silent thirst.

You in rayon with your ton of discs frisk in the garden

Playing an artificial Eskimo basketball with leaves that rust.

There is no saucer of love for the peony,

Only a little brutal water from pipes.

The sink was on fire, death to all leaves, Mother sleepy,

As Autumn flagged or breezed out near the pumps.

Come and go, my numina, ransac the music!

You were found unwilling to be snapped

With Her, hovering among the bees in their own claque

Sullen over such depths, as Judy danced behind the grille-

work.

With "your name on their stingers" they couldn't catch

you

Apparently advancing to your own room

Slowly whirling the black Lazy Susan (you loved your own

games)

Until malaise lit your head with an emotionless beam.

Then the ball would smash in, as if to prove perspective!

And the bell, and time to quit gym for orchestra;

Wondering what your seat would be in the orchestra of

heaven.

Oh my pianist, let me sit beside you as a page-turner!

You said, "The violinist does not like his repertoire tonight.

The pianist looks at the rented stool with some pain.

The page-turner, from Russia, faces his task with delight

And hopes he will be called to serve thus again.

"The violinist knows the rehearsals before

Were too short; the pianist looks at the little shore

Of white keys and feels a most divided will.

The page-turner is at his highest peak still.

"The violinist lifts the violin, as if in a high wind.

The pianist also has treachery in mind

Placing one finger on the white part.

The page-turner is silent, in the best tradition of his art.

"A dinosaur attacks, only to be attacked in the back by a

Rex and crushed.

It is tragic for a girl to love in an attic

Filled with such plaster-of-paris, a warehouse of castaways

If noble, decomposing in the weather, where the maids

have washed."

On the music stand the music stands like softened skin.

The shuffling has stopped. I walk the plank.

I used to be a blank. And now I am a blank.

Oh my pianist, let me sit beside you as a page-turner!