Outtake from STEPS
Can’t help it. Just hear different from you.
I’m always listening for the heart and the god,
the lust for splendor and the splendor of lust.
Even when you tell me that’s just dull passagework
while, say, Schubert is fumbling for his next idea,
I hear the thighs and belly of the stumbling man,
a boy really, half-drunk, shouldering towards
the ever-elusive Friend, the one he wants to worship
and go to God with and touch. The Friend is
always hidden in the music, ahead of where
I ever am. That’s why I guess I’m bored
by music that knows what it’s doing,
where it’s going. Professional, tafelmusik,
the academy of inoffensive technique, skeletons
dressed up in costumes from the opera house,
the one that always burned down yesterday.
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