Unkempt beard,
melancholy ghost.
Still he fills
this subway tunnel with his song.
Passers-by unsure:
They don’t know what to think,
but though rushed
a sonic touch that’s brushed
across tympanic membranes sets
systems sitting upright and alert;
it seems to stop them in their tracks;
So then they turn abrupt.
Just listen to that lyre!
The strangeness of its sound,
tympanic tingles through skin and bone,
the stirred and steaming stupe
of memorable thinks; yet even
as his fingers weave
that gossamer of tangled skeins,
that subtle tapestry of transmuted tones,
it is just as though his soul’s been bared for himself alone;
Right here! As if this were the entranceway
to another nether world athwart distant growls
of passing trains of howls
that sound a pack of Cerberean dogs,
he mourns like that over-worked
servant-sailor of the deep,
for some unimaginable decerebrating loss.