Please Mozart

One sidles up to precipices
hoping not to hope for anything –
which is of course the trap.
Enlightenment’s too slippery for that.
Let’s summon some omniscient
being – plead for it outright –
proceed on the assumption

that we need not dread the night
which at the least is merely darker
than the day, and at the most
provides somewhere imaginative
we might roast our apprehensions –
steel them into raging fear –
to use them, later, cavalierly – spear

our broccoli with their sharp tines:
recite whatever fateful lines
we thought we never ought to say.
I’ve practiced just enough this
morning to believe my fiddle might
survive a concert planned today.
Please Mozart: let it play.


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