In a quake she lost her ears,
but the wave of his sax, she hears
in her stomach, her model womb,
and she’s moving again.
You won’t see it
you watch her lying, passive as ever.
There, just a snake
of his music you might catch
in her languid form.
The tremor of stone is invisible
to any but closed eyes,
you have to listen to it,
as she listens to him
playing in a tavern
fifty centuries from where she sits,
to whistling sailors who earlier laughed
at her. Time binds her to a
stand but wakens her stone heart
to dance and sway.
Such music! It breezes round
her, through her, down her exposed
breasts and throbs
a romance. Whom has he lost
to play like that? He goes
to a blue place where only she can reach
him, away from the din of the club, away
from our blind ears
into her fertile arms.
When he plays he is hers
and every note he breathes is her
breath. When the applause rings
away he goes back to the everyday
but she knows, with an old woman’s
lust, that he keeps a whisper on his lips
for her, hot on the lips of his sax.
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