what blood I strained over Bach’s Chaconne,
threshing the damasked wolf tones
from the ironical and huge second movement

as boats of yew, with gelid boughs of red
yewberries turned pale and dark at once,
broke the tenséd tent of the Irish sea

and “we wanted as much to see Napoleon
as to see nothing,” and through the nothing, tomorrow
or the blent cream sails aroll on every Henry and Cromwell

and bowing the more slowly, vapour off the irony
Bach’s bulletin…it is all alright,
all according to the way things wheeze.

what skin mein bogening shaved of Bach’s Ciaconna
not to hear the cello-howl but go
to sleep gaily, duskily, and jolt awake

at having come, at once, to know it by how freely moved my fetch,
like fifteen years ago when she still bustled,
unstockinged, down the road to meet the fish-man by the flickered posts

and these long, lupine legs which strode
just ahead of where the shadow would accuse
–no, these are not my bones, these are nobódy’s rightful bones.

this middle major lift of Bach’s Chacony
even the sapient Grenieri fall for, every chance they get,
come rushing bluelipped and wolven up the tumulus

play innocent and deliberate–never deliberately
innocent, nor innocently deliberate.
the gut of gusty blows, worms’ empire

mine, in sooty stubs curdled the strings of your old yew bow
trying, and sometimes succeeding, one in three
or fewer, to smother out their savagery beneath my thenar ridge

as when your hair one night
revisited from white their prior blacks
and you buoyed erect in the loaner bed

and began to ask me about their cure. new? temporary?
I–I was rosined evil. I wondered bang-out-loud if talking
your jaw slack felt that much like sleep?

the scatter of squat, flat feet. out yours went,
taunting by reprieve, gathering victuals and devicés
–their sundae-cherry, the gaoler’s reluctant hum.

dragged along the gaud-gilt bridge of Bach’s Chaconne
here briefly between the near, and far shore.
both dusts beck like the cash-yoked necks of wheat.