A Couple Flirts at a Public Masters' Violin Lesson
Chautauqua, New York

A shroud of dust shivers off elaborate arches
into air & the remnants of a keen music
sliced from the ribs of some dead composer.

We praise technique, but long for simple longing.
Music disrupted for learning can be hard
as living with the habits of another person. Both

can be harsh & come in their own time,
no matter the numbers the dead composer
placed before the long cages stretched in rows

down the sheet of what’s known as music.
Just try to follow any precision
suggested by punctures, dark, on bars.

Despite technique, it will get away from you,
the violin’s insistence enough to outlast
the influence of the dead. The earth is full of

ghosts & dust, & memory is a music
no one, dead or alive, can put down in numbers
& notes. Take it, the longest note the bow

pulls off of frayed strings. Try to remember
the hand that clasps the bow stroking the strings
is no more an answer to any question

the dead might ask than flesh & bone is
a hymn played adagio. Try to imagine
the man or woman sitting next to you is not

a lesson but a wicked mix of joy & dust,
sorrow & music. Picture the heart as a violin
that has given up its shape, not its function.

Pretend music, tucked under some warm chin,
might assume the figure, forlorn & dusty,
of an arch, elaborately etched, stretched out

over clumps of dust with hands that have
no recourse but applause. This lesson, & the future
it may hold in its ragged, pre-figured notes,

resists any definite rule about duration. Believe
the few notes that make up this sonata
will recollect the tempo of a trembling, frayed heart,

that what’s left of joy in the flesh will believe
it has been called for, every one of the living
& the dead having paused to bless its going on.

George Looney