Peter McDonald

The glass harmonica

 

Now it starts:
the music being played on glasses,
'unearthly', echoing itself, up in the air,
dividing into separate, ringing parts
that make feints and passes
at each other like a courting pair
alone, together, alone,
sounding the resonance of one another's hearts.

(But of this world all along:
that these had grown
above themselves, were wrong
and overblown
parts of a voiceless song,
is easily shown.)

Like a tulip-bud
the smallest glass, the highest note,
is lead-painted with the rest in its own shade,
and of all the virtuosi in the flood
of players who had by rote
each composition, the last has played
his last, and waits alone
in quiet now, with all the music in his blood.

(from Adam's Dream, 1996)