On Hearing Chopin's "Funeral March" Sonata

Quickly! – etch and whittle –
carve – construct – proportion
breathlessly – another fragile
bright deduction: too extraneous
and glittering: a bangled bibelot –

de trop – unnecessary artifact
and go-between between this
fleeting feeling and the reflex
to report: expensively, luxuriously
crafted as another manifest

impossible attempt to throw
your lot in with that bit of modal
harmony you hear: much-vaunted
music of a sphere – spotlessly
in tune with rapture: let your jots

and tittles show that you have
paid attention: let them glow
and glimmer, dangle in suspension
like a gauzy web of thinnest
golden thread: brittler than

the scatter of the dead – the dust
of silvery white bone: too full
of elegiac moan transmogrified
from anthem: pandemonium corralled:
a minuet après le mort and right

before the next need for another
fragile bright deduction, and the turn
before the torch to which it will
be held – yes, will be held –
yes, will be held – to burn.


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