[Sometimes, not often, it’s true]

Sometimes, not often, it’s true,

an old man comes in on the mail coach

Under the small town’s principal arch

And, reclining against the dashboard, the driver smokes and reads

his paper

But a harp is concealed in his bosom;

The inn is closing up, the church is quite silent, the shopkeeper won’t sell

his kerosene

Nor anything else besides.

The old man adjusts his dickey-bow, his hanky traps a sneeze, his pocket

yields a harpsichord

Which he puts together to the sound of trumpets.

The distant rumble of a tuning-fork, storm-like, disturbs our eternal

repose

The air of which is windless and bitter;

The last flies are trooping, and gather on the horse’s backside and a

flourish of its tail accidentally

Sounds the triangle under the shaft-bow;

In melodious embrace all intertwine: reverberating bronze and

horsehair, and a noble cedar

Sawn up out of eyeshot;

And we, stuck to the tarmac and barely awake, still manage to listen to

the orchestra

Beneath our unsetting sun.

And this is the only reason behind all that we do in our small forgotten

town,

Its forgotten houses and little cinemas;

And the children run after the coach empty-handed,

or almost—with a

doughnut if they’re lucky

Legs dappled with iodine;

Carelessly clad, outlandishly red of face, hair tousled

beyond all combing,

Or parting or ribboning, they run …