Poetry Corner: July/August 2017

The Quartet Crowd

Scarce-breathing sphinxes, row on stonefaced row

Glued to the plush as if some mesmerist

Had stunned them, while onstage the four with fiddles

Bob like weeds in the wind—how can they claim

To love the sounds their bodies so resist?

Fierce listeners are one of music's riddles.

The casual, there for spouses or self-show,

Uncrinkling candies, fingering the program,

Tapping the pulse, collect their killing stare.

Their mask of elevation is a sham

To shield a wobbly edifice whose walls

Are time refashioned into space, a dream

Of motive, motion, theme and countertheme,

A form so fragile and interior

The least snapped handbag or insistent whisper

Snuffs out a stanchion and the vision falls.

They come as masons to a shrine of air.

                                                  —Bruce Berger 

"The Quartet Crowd" from Facing the Music by Bruce Berger, © 2014 by Bruce Berger. Used by permission of Conundrum Press, a division of Samizdat Publishing Group, LLC (conundrum-press.com). Any third party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited.