by Robin¹ Behn

    Inside the hole， where it's yellow，

    the boy has dropped a quarter

    so that the guitar rattles²

    when he shakes it by the neck.

    Knocks， scrapes， scars.

    So this is what music is.

    The wooden body is no longer

    bigger than his body.

    The strings³， which， when

    he strums them，

    go on forever are forever

    wound around small pegs⁴

    shaped like the big ones

    they wrap the ropes around，

    there being an absence of

    able-bodied mourners

    to lower， with the softer machines

    of their bodies， the coffin⁵ down.

    It was a cold day.

    The boy had not been born yet，

    but stood among us

    warm in his round place.

    Then， from the distance，

    the bagpiper⁶ who'd been found

    in the yellow pages

    extracted the horizon note

    like a red needle from the sky.

    And so it was not with nothing

    human our friend was lowered.

    This is what music is.

    But how did it sound to the boy，

    the bladder of cries squeezed

    through the slit⁷ throat

    when there had not been anything

    yet to cry about？

    The solace⁸ of music is

    not that we recognize it.

    It is that the hearing

    comes from before and is wound

    around after. Between，

    our bad singing a stranger

    dozed⁹， then bulldozed to.

    At home， in its case， the guitar

    was hunkered inside the dark

    into which music goes，

    and the more particular dark

    from which music comes

    was inside of it.

    The sound hole swallowed and passed back

    buckets of silence

    until the inner and outer dark

    had the same yellow smell.

    This， while the song the boy

    would pay for waited， still still.

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