Home Notes

The virgin daughter is playing her flute
To the grandfather who once wooed
His wife with this antique instrument.

The paterfamilias on his study bed
Lies stoned. Behind his flaming eyeballs
His youthful typist smiling tells him
Incessantly as the clock ticks that she now
Prefers to couple with a pimply boy.

The chatelaine of the house jots down
“Dry cleaning, aspirin, Bromo Seltzer, bread”
Savors the elegant sadness of Mozart
Compares the crude sorrows of her husband
Recoils from an old heresy of her own
Reluctant to feel in memory that rack
Of silent screams, dismembering farewells
Yet prays, let me shoulder for him a part
Of this heavy paraphernalia of grief.
I also have packed in along that trail.

The notes fall pure as snow from the last
Conifers. The old man sleeps and sighs.
His sorry son-in-law coughs heavily
Slumps easier as the weight shifts to his wife
To long-dead Mozart and to his daughter
Who with her flute distills his foul distresses
Into clear tones shapelier than tears.