"A Musician's
Wife
Between the
visits to the shock ward
The doctors
used to let you play
On the old
upright Baldwin
Donated by a
former patient
Who is said to
be quite stable now.
And all day
long you played Chopin,
Badly and
hauntingly, when you weren't
Screaming on
the porch that looked
Like an
enormous birdcage. Or sat
In your room
and stared out at the sky.
You never
looked at me at all.
I used to walk
down to where the bus stopped
Over the hill
where the eucalyptus trees
Moved in the
fog, and stared down
At the lights
coming on, in the white rooms.
And always,
when I came back to my sister's
I used to get
out the records you made
The year
before all your terrible trouble,
The records
the critics praised and nobody bought
That are
almost worn out now.
Now, sometimes
I wake in the night
And hear the
sound of dead leaves
against the
shutters. And then a distant
Music starts,
a music out of an abyss,
And it is dawn
before I sleep again."
(Weldon
Kees)
