One constant in my unremarkable life
The infinite ringing of tinnitus
Ignored by methods learned so long ago
I could not remember to teach them to you
Certainly not fail safe methods
With age it seems harder not to listen
And lament as it gets louder
Slowly, slowly, barely perceptibly
Louder
As through a screen I listen to things
From the dullest congressional hearing
To the most exquisite music
Of Gustav Mahler and Sigur Rós
I know there will come a day
I will not be able to dissect the intricacies of a randomly chosen Mahler symphony
Or appreciate the perfect bliss
Of Jónsi channeling angels
Breaking barriers, cerebral and ethereal
How will I remember this divine sound
When tinnitus masks the music of the spheres?
Will my memory ability do it justice?
Soon, oh graceful Lord, soon the curse will overshadow the blessing
And I will have to stand condemned of it being my own fault
It makes me want to cry when I say
I'll miss all music
For music has been the most trusted and reliable friend I've ever known
Sacrificed for what? Persistent ringing
But who knows, perhaps the tinnitus
Is to keep me from hearing the voices that accompany schizophrenia
Perhaps that's the sacrifice, the trade-off
Godsent music the price to keep insanity at bay
I must not think that way
Though my years are getting shorter
And tinnitus will surely claim my hearing sooner rather than later
I can't let myself feel guilty
For basking in the sonic waves of comfort
For playing Riceboy Sleeps again
Listening for the million musical noises
Floating around in the atmosphere like fire flies on a dark, humid summer night
There are recordings of ghosts on the record
I'm no para psychologist and I don't even believe in ghosts
But I swear I hear their mournful cries
Pianos in empty rooms
Simple melodies picked out by no hand at all
Sounds that cannot be identified
Pin ***** starlight shines pencil thin bright light beams
That show the moths and dustmites hanging from the air
Riceboy Sleeps you can wear like a cool coat or hide beneath like a sheet waiting for Answer Man to come get you
Stalling, stalling to keep you here until the absolute last minute
Something so strong that even tinnitus can never fail to steal it's otherworldly beauty
And though it's true I would choose Mahler over Sigur Rós and Jónsi/Alex
To be stuck on that desert island with
It's only because I think his symphonies would be better tools against boredom, so complex and intricate they are
I could live 50 more years and still not have heard what waits in his symphonies
Jónsi's voice is carved on my heart
I take it with me everywhere I go
I will never lose it
It is indeed part of me, even as it grows in it's mythology
Jónsi will be with me always
Even through the gates and down streets of gold
Mahler, though, will take a long, long time to work his way into my memory banks
Though he my not totally succeed I know
I'll get more than enough
And the desert island experience
Was only made tolerable by those 9 symphonies either in the Claudio Abaddo versions or the Muchael Tilson-Thomas cycle
So I keep 'em both
And in similar ways my tinnitus is staved off by
Message For Bears
Immanu El
Stafraenn Hakon
Yeasayer
Jean Sibelius
Gregor Samsa
...there are many others
   Stand against tinnitus
   Pray a miracle from God
   To point out
   Unrecognized silence

Bring some wine around
Chana said
and I’ll put on
the music

and take off
some clothes
so I took some wine
(red she liked best)

and she put on the Mahler
and we sipped our wine
and she brought out
some small cakes

those fancy things
with small cherries on
and we ate and talked
and I listened to the Mahler

and looked at her
sitting there
with her big blue eyes
and that beehive

hair style
and her plumpish frame
and she said
how's the writing going?

not bad
still typing away
still learning my craft
she put her hand

on my thigh
and said
how about I
show you my craft?

I finished off my fancy cake
and drained my wine
(two glasses after)
and she took me

to her bedroom
with the big double bed
with purple sheets
and cover with large flowers

a picture or two
on the walls
and from the other room
the Mahler still played

and she lay on the bed
after *******
and I looked out
onto the evening sky

and stars and moon
and street lamps
showing a young couple
going by

and I was there with Chana
and she waited there ready
like some big mountain
waiting to be to climbed

and she said
aren't you coming on over?
sure
I said

and began *******
to the distant Mahler
the final movement
of the 2nd symphony

and went on over
and she said
how do you want me?
I told her how

and that was it
we made love
as the Mahler ended
the other room quiet

the far off sound
of a barking dog
from the window
the pale moon

quite bright
and we made love
( sans Mahler)
for most of the night.

Mrs Cleves
her husband
long ago

elbowed out
allowed me in
the young guy

the green
at the gills guy
come around

she said
bring a bottle
I'll put on

the Mahler
1st or 2nd
and we can drink

and talk and whatsoever
so when evening came
and work was done

and dinner eaten
I took off
to Mrs Cleves's place

and she welcomed me in
with her usual
soft spoken voice

and Scottish tones
and she poured
the drinks

and put on
the Mahler
on the Hi-Fi

and she talked
about her day
and I talked

about mine
and so Benny
she said

how's it going?
how's the writing?
heard any music

you think
I should hear?
I sipped my drink

(usually Scotch)
and said
well the writings

coming along slow
but I heard
this Delius guy's music

and it kind of
turned me on  
I said

Delius?
she said
think I've heard of him

she drained
her glass
and poured

another gin
the Mahler played
in the background

she'd put on
her a tight fitting dress
short above

her knees
she sat
crossed legged

then uncrossed them
then crossed them again
I’ve heard tell

that one
of the young girls
has her eyes

on you
she said
news to me

I said
the student girl
long hair

middle class
Mrs Cleves said
nice ***

I understand
I sipped the drink
the Mahler movement

was slow
emotional
O her

yes she's been
talking to me
I said

given me a book
by Pound
Pound?

Mrs Cleves said
yes
some American poet

I said
why
did she give you

the book?
she asked
don't know

guess she thought
I might like it
no female

gives a man
a book of poems
unless she's

after something
Mrs Cleves said
like the Robert Burns

book you gave me
you mean?
I said smiling

that's different
she said
I drained my glass

and she poured another
leaning over me
her eyes gazing

into mine  
how about bed Benny?
she said

the Mahler moved on
to a louder movement
lively

crashing
I drank in
her perfume

her breath breathed
on me
and so we went

to her room
and bed
and undressed

and the Mahler
became far away
like under water

sounding
the curtains drawn
against the night

the moon shining
through the pink
flowered cloth

I didn't tell her
about
the student girl's

fine *** or ***
in case
of her wrath.

O Miss Pinkie said – she dropped the Mrs once her divorce came through although being a Catholic it didnt amount to much- if I could have my life over again and had the wisdom I have now and a lot of understanding of the human machine Id have lived differently and not married the **** I  did but there you go we must live forward and not backward although at times we wish we could but we cant so there you are and as a child coming from a strict Catholic family church going and the Mass were our Sundays highlight or so it seemed at the time and the priest as often at our house as a neighbour or a member of the close family and would come and sit and drink and eat and say things about others and how so and sos daughter had gone by the  wayside and needed taking in hand and my father said any daughter his going by any wayside would get a good tanning of their backside and the priest saying that is a way going from homes now but my father said not here Father not here and it was true as my sister knew as she was many a time feeling his hand on her backside if she step out of line and me too now and then and my mother stood in his shadow and said do as your father says and would shake a finger at us if she thought we were out of step with our fathers wishes and a cousin wanted to join the Little Sisters and encouraged me to go too and talked me into it when I was old enough and with my fathers blessing- blessing being his agreement or his say so- and he said I know what men are like youre better off there with the Sisters than with with some of the specimens around here in Glasgow to wed and bed so I joined the Little Sisters as did the cousin and were set to become brides of Christ but I couldnt settle to it never had the vocation for the life what with all those maidens and their narrow views and the cousin went first and within a month or two was out with a man named Scott and before you could say hows your ***** off for spots she was up the aisle dressed in the white with the thin rod of a man beside her and within a seventh month she dropped a babe- his we assumed- and then just before I was due to take my simple vows I left too much to my fathers annoyance and being put out by it he said nothing to me for months on end turned his back on me if I entered the house- lived after leaving with my cousin her her thin man and the babe in a room in the attic- but he came around and knowing he could no more put me over his knee he used his words to have a go at me if I stepped beyond his likes then I met the man who was to be and was my husband and on the first date- the cinema where else- it was kiss kiss and fiddle fiddle in the back rows with others also so inclined and after a few weeks he had me in his bed-he lived in digs as he called them- and I knew nothing then about *** or anything relating to that side of matters and I was surprised by what he was doing and where and how and I said is this how it is? and he said it was and had always been so and so it was and I got to enjoy it after the first few times and then we had our child a boy and then my husband got a job away a lot and then he started having it with other women or girls while away and I had it fewer and fewer times until one day I found out about them all and I said no more with me and he said good and left and that was it and I brought up our son on my own until he left home to get a job abroad and I was alone and began needing to work myself having no husband to support me and it was there that my met young Baruch-Benedict he called himself but I liked Baruch better- and at first I never thought about him and *** and that because he was nineteen years younger than I was and I was old enough to be his mother but he had that way with him and he said can I come to your place I want to read you some my my writings and so I said yes and he came and I gave him whiskey or wine and I put on music on the record player and he read his work and I watched him read and sensed him near me and the drink softened him up and the music got to him and he said I need you and I said in what way? he said in what way and I went and undressed and came back in a kimono and he said I looked like a Japanese woman he once saw in a book and he drank more and then he undressed and so it began almost every other night after work in the evenings hed come around and we had drinks and he brought some Mahler and  we played that and it became our love music and he had me in ways id not been had before and played at spanking me prior to ******* me- as he called it- and it reminded me of my father- the spankings not the *** of course- and it made me tingle and sometimes it was on my double bed often or not if we couldnt make it on the sofa with the Mahler symphony blaring away and the glasses empty and him over me and I eyeing him or closing my eyes imagining him and sometimes he was underneath me and it was him and me and Mahler and his hand on my behind and him in me and hed say come on come on and I was becoming out of breath feeling my age or so it seemed then he met some young girl and that was it I was alone again and sat listening to Mahler and I drank my ***** thinking of him knowing he would leave after all he was just a boy I was getting to be older but wanting to recall our nights together and Mahler and whiskey and that time we had it on the carpet the carpet soft and thick and he saying wheres the fence where can we ride? and we laughed and that time at work in the wash room where I got him stiff as a rifle and ready to shoot but it was too public and he had to walk it off but then he left work and it became a mere echo of former days my hair less dyed letting my hairs become different coloured greys.

SUMMER MARCHES IN
(Movement no. 1)

It comes crashing down
like doom.
A martial fanfare
begins a long conversation
questioning fate,
arguing for the human condition,
and for death's open invitation,
which we dare not deny.

WHAT THE MEADOW FLOWERS TELL ME
(Movement no. 2)

Their blooming voices
are oboes and lush violins.
The sun is surely brassy bright
in the sky above.
Radiant alpine flowers
and woodwinds
from deep within their burrows
make the case
for a music well tended
and serenely fed
by sweet springs emerging from the depths
here below.

WHAT THE CREATURES OF THE FOREST TELL ME
(Movement no. 3)

The life force
tends to run amok.
Yet things do not fall apart,
the center still holds.

And though it is mundane -
pedestrian, at times -
we cannot deny the joy in this life,
nor do we wish to.

But know, traveler,
that submerged in every caldron of joy
is a small *** of darkness.
And it will find you
or you will find it -
not only because it is fated,
but for the sake of your sanity.

WHAT MAN TELLS ME
(Movement no. 4)

Here darkness sings.
Again the plucked string.
O Mensch!
You tell the tale!
You take this story
back to the mountain.

A woeful tale you bring,
but it is gilded with joy.

A chorus exalts your condition.
Deep is its grief,
but joy is deeper still.

WHAT THE ANGELS TELL ME
(Movement no. 5)

Bimm Bamm
Bimm Bamm
the children's choir
sweetly intones.
And what, pray tell,
do Angels have to say to us?

I've heard about love
I've heard about emptiness
I've heard about absence
without presence,
about nothingness and the void.

But I have never heard such singing!

WHAT LOVE TELLS ME
(Movement no. 6)

Sweet the air we breathe.
Pleasant the sights before us.
Words are stilled,
anxious thoughts banished.

There is nothing on Earth
or in Heaven
that disputes this sweet resolution
all the parts made whole
Nothing that could possibly
speak against it
(though French Horns will have
their interests heard).

But here it is.
The end.

O Mensch
come to your last and best
resting place.

Also sprach Gustav Mahler.

Miss Pinkie
pours me scotch
in a glass

any ice?

no thank you
I slip slow
allowing
to swirl round
my twenty six
year old mouth

she sits down
beside me

she wears that
polka dot
red short dress
and the blue
cardigan
her dyed brown
cropped hair style

want music?

got Mahler?

yes of course
she gets up
and puts on
a Mahler
symphony
on her old
gramophone

as she bends
I spy red
underwear
unattached
to the light
brown stockings

she comes back
and sits down
Mahler starts
lights are low

can I smoke?

sure you can
she replies

I light up
so does she

how is she?
she asks me

who is that?

the slim girl
at the home
pretty thing
all brains but
no knockers
Miss Pinkie
says softly

we just talk
I reply

about what?

poetry
modern art
politics

is that all?

yes that's all

she inhales
and stares cool
exhaling

any ***?

of course not
not with her

why not her?

I don't know

we're silent
Mahler plays
we smoke on
sip whiskies

I study
her two chins
her blue eyes
her thick thighs

the last time
we had ***
she mutters
it was good
on the couch
till you fell
to the floor
half way through

she was right
'bout that night

MAN LIFEBOATS
MAN OVERBOARD
she shouts out
too loudly

she stubs out
the wasted
cigarette
so do I

how about
my big bed?
she asks me

if you like
I reply
thinking of
the slim girl
with the brains
and hot ***
in the back
of her car

that image
in my head
as we walk
to her bed
her plump ****
swaying slow
to Mahler
the moonlight
in the sky

this is how
the world ends
no big bang
just a long
drawn out sigh.

Miss Pinkie
(she dropped the Mrs
when the divorce
came through)

liked to put on
Mahler’s 1st symphony
when he came around
and he brought

the bottle of scotch
and when she let him in
she said
ah Professor

you have brought
the *****
I shall slip into something
more comfortable later

and she closed the door
behind him
and followed him
up the passage

her flip-flops
flapping behind him
like some penguin
and already he could hear

the opening bars
of the Mahler
as he entered the lounge
and smelt her perfume

and she took the bottle
and he said
I’ve selected the poems
for my first book

and she said
from the kitchen
o good
you’ll have to let me

read them before you
send them off
sure
he replied

sitting on her sofa
remembering where
he’d made love last time
and how he almost

fell off the sofa
but clung onto
her ample flesh in time
and how she laughed

and said
man overboard
throw him a lifebuoy
and as she came

with two glasses of the *****
and set them down
on the table
she sat down next to him

and kissed his cheek
and said
thanks for the *****
and for coming

and hey loosen that collar
this is no funeral
and her fingers undid
his shirt collar

down half way
and she rubbed his chest
and hairs
isn’t that better?

sure
he said
and leaned forward
and sipped the *****

already Pete in the pants
was stirring
and she said
I like this Mahler piece

it does things to me
and he listened
to the trumpets
and violins and those cellos

and sipped again
and her eyes widened
and her lips
came down on him

and he lay back
on the sofa overwhelmed
and like a drowning man
opened wide his arms

and waved
but none came
to rescue
no lifeboats set out

no one in sight
just him and Miss Pinkie
and Mahler
and the long hot night.

what's the biggest difference
between 20th century's
french and german
existentialism,
    and the 21st century's
primarily, anglo-sphere,
realisation of an existential
   "crisis"...
           anti-jew meme...
         the globalist octopus...
imagine...
     some people have
recovered from an existential
crisis, having established
vast constructs of thought
way back in the 20th century,
namely
the french, and the germans..
but...
my oh my oh my my...
the anglo-sphere of linguistics
has only, "just now"
awoken to this...
   quiet a predicament,
wouldn't you say?
                         fertile ground...
oh sure, there was existential
angst in the anglo-
sphere among irish
pillars...
                beckett, joyce...
but concrete architectures
of thought, regarding existentialism,
seem to be absent...
  so... counter-argument:
so how come i can
freely buy a copy of some
german philosopher,
a french novelist turned
philosopher...
           but...
  i'm skint... when it comes
to english thinkers more
or less associated with
my status, rather than stance,
on contemporary "translation"?
   elitism...
no... it's not that...
      i could have just well
have procured
a life helping out my father
in industrial roofing...
             i didn't mind roofing...
it's not an exactly pristine
labour of love sort
of environment...
the scottish widows' h.q.
roof near st. paul's?
        me.
   i was part of that
monstrosity...
       but... come again?
but there are some many attachment
cursors when it comes
to an anglican take
on "revising" continental
existentialism...
        whatever crisis
the continental people
felt, and consolidated
the 20th century people...
is only just starting to bud
in the anglo-phonic world...
start-up, island,
end result,
    h'america and australia...
there was never a question
as to why, or if,
the english-speaking
people would ever entertain
existentialism,
but, suddenly they are,
at least starting to look
into the pit,
from their ivory towers...
immediate escape
impetus?
      reach for the fictive
narrative,
                disavow journalism...
make journalism bedfellows
with political rhetoric...
there's no debate...
circus, however you look
at it...
             you can't fathom
an abstract variant
of the german or the french
mind, gripped by
an existential critique,
a piquancy,
    a pedantry...
in the english speaking world...
there are,
just simply...
   too many attachments
to deal with...
       - growing a beard:
meant exactly that -
eat ****.    
         i don't see where
there a "me" to be found
in a (0, 0) starting space,
of net-worth-"work"...
     coumpters-freeze
network...
for a language...
that ridiculed,
or became succinct
in succumbing
to its anglo-preferences
of objectifying counter-standards
for its own...
shortcomings...

  what has 20th century
existential philosophy have
to do with "anything",
esp. if arrived from
the either french
of german, cultures?

we have Joe Slave over 'ere...
oh right... sorry...
paweł nowak....
just took joe stephen slave's
role was
the person, the hands,
in a recycling factory...
do you mind?
  rather:
do you mind...
teaching your natives...
   to...
   and you know how that
cindarella story ends...

introducing existentialism
to the brits and,
generally,
  the anglican variety of
the tongue, being
used...
   will end up as, failure...
the 20th century
taught me this,
the irish failed,
the french
and the germans...
basically a "foreign" idea
is more than just...
******..
the people are ******,
with paradoxes
of their women...

                sure... a bit like
Iceland...
oh, ****, a bit too close
to the continent...
like madagascar
  is to africa...
and sri lanka is to india?
i'm not 'ere to care to
the idiosyncratic
concerns of island people...
contra the, "collective"...

island people will forever
remain island people,
"solipsistic", idiosyncratic,
idioms...
            i can't change that...
always prone to export...
but never to import...
    island people,
       the **** is there to say?
ever bewilder yourself
over chanel 4 news...
and how...
  john snow is slipping
into dementia?
      you listen to the cue?
no?
                  sorry... john...
dementia on the horizon...

attempting to adapt
existentialism into england
will fail,
given their moral high-ground
of the "migrant crisis"...
it's an island...
  the borders are clarifying,
distinct,
        sure, the people can be *****
when their language
is bored in being
a "lingua franca"...
         but other people have
other, in-debt defences...

western slavs?
ever hear a spaniard speak
pollack, just because
he hiked with a polish girl?
yeah... mahler...
                       violins and ****...
you only listen:
                  for an idea...
it comes, it comes,
it doesn't come...
well... you move onto
some khachaturian...
        so,                 no biggie...

you can't import continetal
thinking to an island people,
they have no concept
of borders...
their naive presupposing
barrier, centered-ground is
unshakeable...

   existential philosophy
"meme" rate of survival is... ?
0.1,
binary, negation, an affirmative
statement,
and then the fiasco...

       it doesn't help
that there's an alternative
outlet via h'america or australia...
i'm not looking
at the "bigger picture",
when there isn't one...

     20th century existentialism
will not work in 21st century england,
or any english-speaking world
to begin with...
there are just, too many,
attachment points,
         as many nurtured
nostalgia avenues
as there are amnesia riddled
currencies of attention
exhaustion...
        it's just a pristine model
to revive the serf...

there's no point reading existentialism
to a people,
so far lodged in their
isolationism that they
can claim, both an island-stature...
and two continents,
by extension
       of stating: "being aware"...      

i guess you have to be born
on the continent
to read anything by 20th century
writers,
but... trying to implement
the word...
into the idiosyncrasy
of island-dwelling people,
akin to the English?

                    i'm not even going
to bother trying...
they're island-folk...
   they "think" of borders akin
to coastlines...
and not migration
fake bordering of a contradiction
of peoples occupying
a quicksand pit
of looking at a geography map...
island-folk...
  they know border...
because they know... island...

you can't translate
something that's already
paradoxical to them
  (hypocritical, is not a milder
term of usage for the desired
execution)...
     no...
                not going to happen...
two islands,
some set of continental enclaves...
culture...
whatever you want...

             i've lived with them,
even though i've lived pretty much
among either the irish migrants,
or the scots...
    you're not going to translate
an island, into a continent's
auxiliary...
  right now...
you'd think that
   Estonia would become
characteristic of an island-people
auxiliary mentality...

       i can't blame these people
though...
   an island environment
provides an island people
mentality...
    if you have never been
part of a congregation,
geographically...
   yes...
      but they're borrowing
continental idiosyncracy...
****** *****...

   Iceland?
            yeah... oh yeah...
they're hot on the topic of what
island life is like...
being so...
   conservative that they even
have developed apps
for people to check their
genetic proximity
and any immediacy to live,
+ baggage...

      the Brits were always 'ere...
the Icelandisch?
were always there...
          and...
  sorry... for the already given
postcard: wish you were
here analogy of...
            curiosity killed
the cat...

           but island dwelling people
will always be,
an island dwelling people...
right now,
you do what i do...
you play chamaleon...
  "sociopath"...
                you...
begin with: a-pathy...
          without pathology
looking for... what requires
you to mingle with the most
pathological examples of
a hushed sanity of society...

          and...
          your luck, as well as mine...
nothing really happens...
like butter smeared
over a gently toasted
piece of toast.

hello tomorrow.

As you took
old Mr Wheale
to the lavatory

and sat
and watched
he didn’t fall

or slide
you recalled
the night before

lying in Mrs Tuba’s bed
the curtains drawn
against the night

the street lamps
shining through
the bed soft and wide

and she turning up
the Mahler 5th
and you thinking

of the parish priest
and what he’d say
if he could have seen you

there smoking
naked and bare
the book you’d bought

on the side
the Solzhenitsyn
gulag book

she wanted to read
the dresser
and chest of drawers

and photos
on the side
nearly done

Mr Wheale said
breaking through
your thoughts

his cataract eyes
staring into space
and you remembered

Mrs Tuba coming in
the room
dressed in her pink

dressing gown
open down the middle
her ******* inviting

her big blues eyes
smiling
turned up

the Mahler
she said
bought these two whiskies

and she laid them
on the side
and climbed

into her bed
I’m done
Mr  Wheale said

and so you did
what was needed
and helped him dress

and on his way
his metal frame walker
shuffled along

the passageway
the music of Mahler‘s 5th
a memory

Mrs Tuba
gone to sleep now
you guessed

the whiskies drunk
the *** forgot
a new day entered

the window on your right
swift it had gone
that ****** night.

What does infinite longing
sound like?
Where is the vault that holds
the seed corn of sadness?
And how can we mute our fear
when the barred owls in these
dank woods sob in perfect
sympathy
with the night?

Here
the tense oboes find their range
silence pervades their thoughts
the drum marks a beat
while the string section weaves
a hieroglyph of grief
and resignation.

This symphony is called
the song of the night
and night proves to be
full of whispered life
rustling leaves
and the courage to face it.

But night is not synonymous
with darkness.
Its ways and means
harmonize with the light
render half the whole
parcel our sleeping hours
into dreams
and fitful moments
beneath the staring moon.

In the morning
a plaintive bird song
stirs thought
brings the sun into the east
and wraps night's dreams into
a silk handkerchief
where dreams are tightly bound
and forgotten.

Movement no.1
Andante con moto

Farewell.

I am leaving you
with the sweetness
and the sadness
of every creature on this earth
draped over my shoulders
as a shroud

We rest now
before the final struggle
looking down upon our lives
from a precipice

The wind calls up
a faint sound

a song
of healing
as resignation

So bring forth the dirge
let dogs and oboes
cue the horns
as we embark
upon a tender struggle

We are whipped back
and forth
between grief and glory
in this life

an indifferent life
lush with raw power

But thankfully
at the end of every day
there is sleep.

Movement no. 2
Im tempo eines gemächlichen Ländlers. Etwas täppisch und sehr derb.

Dance returns
and goes mad

Who could lift a leg
that high?  

Not I.

The music careens
off the walls
in a dissonant minuet
of the hours

The clenched teeth
of each and every minute
grind here
as if time itself
took heel
and made a sparkling trace
across the pines
of this exalted floor of dance.

Movement no. 3
Rondo Burleske: allegro assai. Sehr trotzig.

A music major's delight.
Fugues against fugues.
Dense contrapuntal figures
and sarcastic counterpoint
shouting out
from the back of the class.

And then

just love

confused perhaps
but real love indeed.

Movement no. 4
Sehr langsam und noch zurüclhaltend

The violin
noblest of instruments
takes its place

In bitter sorrow
life soon lost
the fruit of the tree
is extinguished
the promise of green days
burned by drought

All is withheld.

There is peace at the end
but no joy
the abyss is only silence

and a taut string
connecting us
to eternity.