A Musicians Wife

Between the visits to the shock

The doctors used to let you

On the old upright

Donated by a former

Who is said to be quite stable now.

And all day long you played Chopin,

Badly and hauntingly, when you

Screaming on the porch that

Like an enormous birdcage.

Or

In your room and stared out at the sky.

You never looked at me at all.

I used to walk down to where the bus

Over the hill where the eucalyptus

Moved in the fog, and stared

At the lights coming on, in the white rooms.

And always, when I came back to my sister'sI used to get out the records you

The year before all your terrible trouble,

The records the critics praised and nobody

That are almost worn out now.

Now, sometimes I wake in the

And hear the sound of dead leavesagainst the shutters.

And then a

Music starts, a music out of an abyss,

And it is dawn before I sleep again.