Paul Plays a Bourrée

Someone will plunder your life,
       break a wing & expect
               you to fly like a pleasant
                       tune, or a god.

So you play Bach’s bourrée
       at a party with friends.

You may not know how to read
       a score, or the hieroglyphs
               that will bless your own crypt.

Neither did the pharaohs read—
       and the prophets, at times,
               mere illiterate, bearded,
                       fasting fools on a binge.

Bach requires merely a dance,
       pas-de-bourrée, Jenny Wren,
               and the love of the bass line
                       as melody.

Bach believed in the sun
       like you believe in Cole Porter.

Some fan has memorized everything
       and writes your life down
               in the smallest books of the apocrypha.

Someone else, lovely, who has barely ever
       heard your name, she closes her eyes;
               she is learning to sing.

David Wright lives and writes in Champaign, IL.