Last Movement
     … the composition of music – an affliction in the nature of a
     disease – haunts me. Stowed in the only watertight, fade-proof

                                                                      Dmitri Shostakovich
now the viola thinking aloud

through the door and you, blue jug in hand
 
for the stumped geraniums drowning again

in fluted conjecture & lost red bloom
 
(why for the life of us) already
 
the snare going it softly alone
 
– think! ink ink ink! panics a blackbird –
 
as if this quitting were a choice played out
 
in unison on the strings, the way one

shakes off root-cramp (pull out & go)

what with that ticking percussion

and all the peculiar plurals of joy
...