What is music? The heart rendered? What life Is to a dream? The eyes object in rapture? What is the soul's shell, but a half note hollow Contained with music? Art is cold— Echo, mute repetition, poor traits for nine Dead muses of memory, a fiction after The fact, nor can there be a shelf for credence Without cadence. And though the painter's eyes Remember rainbows colour, his hands forget All, save black and white. Though the sculptor sees The vein of nudes within the sparkled rock That stone, still, looks back with grieving half- Heartedness. The chambered heart is beating, The droning gales are sighing, but like the one bird Who flies three ways— before and after song, My middling wings pronounce two kingdoms part Music. The felt fingers of rain consort with well- Tempered earthly quays and everywhere there is There is the bright organic instrument— And actuality is sidled with dead metaphors. Music is but purest feeling given air to, The mind soothed, the spirit seduced and a quell For ache of heart, music is pure making— Existence itself, another plain, a well dressed Traveler, a border with life— Body and spirit, who hand in hand and each With each, are bound as wings are paired; One flyer soaring.