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.