Weldon Kees

"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)