Let’s start again from the top.
I enter on the third
beat; you have to keep
the bass line firm. It’s hard

to hear the lute against
the harpsichord, and I
know I must have winced:
the light was in my eye.

Yes, I agree the light
is very strong today.
Your earring pearl pops out.
Mine too? Our souls must be

aligned. And Peter’s chair
glows like the blacksmith’s forge.
It’s odd we’re so aware
of light. Eyes must take charge

when music stops. I feel
we’re standing outside time,
watching a carousel
to see if it will come

alive again, or else
we’re lost for eternity.
That’s silly – feel my pulse:
firm as the clock. And we,

so solid and so full
of life, won’t turn to dust.
For each created soul,
the preachers say, must last.

Surely we’ll congregate
in some form centuries
from now, and will you yet
be playing those heartwood keys?

Let’s start again from the top.

Imagined from Vermeer’s “The Concert,” stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston) in 1990 and not recovered.