Desire Returns as First Chair

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Clearly Brahms has a hand in this night;

She cannot sleep; there is music

Coming from the garden,

Someone without the sense or grace

To go to bed,

Perhaps the neighbors are up late,

The casements open.

.

She goes out, down the path, following the music;

Yes, it is Brahms, there is the deep intonation

Of the cello played

By a virtuoso,

The rich yet precise chords of a piano, the lyrical counterpoint

Of two instruments making love.

.

Then she sees that he has returned, Desire

And is waiting by the cherry tree.

Bathed in moonlight. .

He bends her toward him, takes his first

Kiss, kissing away her breath,

Taking from her, her flesh

Artfully recasting her fine bones,

Changing her to burnished wood

Curved, and hollow.

.

He draws his bow

Over her taut strings:

He touches her frets, his fingers hovering;

Of her emptiness, he makes a sonata;

Of her cry a vibrato;

Of her being

What the moon might sing of failed love–.

.

Night of barcarolles and shooting stars

Of surrender, quickened, released,

Variations on incarnate longing

Of an unsettled score.

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copyright Jenne’ R. Andrews 2010