Music Lessons | Poem

Music Lessons Poem Text

Sometimes, in the middle of the lesson,

we exchanged places. She would gaze a moment at

her hands

spread over the keys; then the small house with its

knickknacks

its shut windows,

its photographs of her sons and the serious

husband,

vanished as new shapes formed. Sound

 became music, and music a white

scarp for the listener to climb

alone. I leaped rock over rock to the top

and found myself waiting, transformed,                      10

and still she played, her eyes luminous and willful,

her pinned hair failing down—

forgetting me, the house, the neat green yard,

she fled in that lick of flame all tedious bonds;

supper, the duties of flesh and home,                          15

the knife at the throat, the death in the metronome.