A good gnashing of verbs
grinds sparks from stale music.


Wind-crushed melodies deserve
a crushed fate being hollow.


The song , I’m afraid, is an old one.
But how old can the numeral 1 be?


I don’t know.




*




Dust its airborne disease
with sharpest incisors. Music


ologists assess an aria
by its fingerprints by


God. Has it touched you, white lady?
   Has it pressed a fossil
in your devil’s heart?


Its hands are on
the murder weapon:


the air I breathe —
laced with pestilence —
a sound, as
brick, dense.