It’s true that I am a sucker for a poem that references a composer or a brass instrument, but that’s just a small part of why this poem endures as one of my favorites—bees seducing a plum’s unaware blossom, the hard stare shared between two young musicians while the audience does not notice; the phrases ‘timpanic clamor,’ ‘the condensation of human passage,’ and the last three lines—all together: perfection.
Following is an excerpt from the poem; the complete text can be found here.
French Horn
For a few days only, the plum tree outside the window shoulders perfection. No matter the plums will be small, eaten only by jays and squirrels. I feast on the one thing, they on another, the shoaling bees on a third. What in this unpleated world isn't someone's seduction? The boy playing his intricate horn in Mahler's Fifth turns it and turns it...