Listening to Mahler

Listening to Mahler

for Gus


The last two movements slid by too fast
while my thoughts were busied with the clock
which predicts I have thirty more years

and will be older than I ever wanted to be,
yet my body volatile, never meant to walk
on waves of time or produce solitude’s grammar.

Long life calls for another tongue, the first one
worn out, new syllables please, to be hip
joint, to be gouty toe, to be stoop.

The music: strips of darkness billow and swerve,
sound smoothed as stone is by white water,
room folding close while exuberance spirals,

and I think of my body done with the thrashing,
done with the lilting air, perfect arc of notes, tugs
of phrasing, molten grief I pour into its structure.

Copyright © Mary Crow
—first published in Freshwater Review

—reprinted in the anthology
Lasting: Poetic Visions of Aging
Pima Press, 2002.
Posted over on Mary Crow's Blog