December 2024
Robert Wexelblatt
robertwexelblatt@gmail.com
Bio Note: Here are two poems about listening to music. Nietzsche wrote that “Without music, life would be a mistake,” and I agree except that, even with music, life still furnishes plenty of mistakes. So does my writing.

Note: There’s a new book of stories coming out, May Hill. Another, The Book of Misunderstandings, is scheduled to show up in springtime.


Music Appreciation at Midnight

Once again Yo-Yo Ma performs the 
Suites for the first time, animates them just 
for me.  This is what a single bow 
can do, two hands, four strings, two noble minds.  

Ma plays; I take in as much as I can 
grasp.  He’s deep inside the Hispanic dance 
for German angels.  This last sarabande’s 
inside him too.  As for me, I press my
face up against a double-glazed window.

The faces of cellists, violinists 
pianists as they play ecstatically, 
their nodding to the rhythms of the 
sublime, the strain of major muscles, twitching
minuscule nerves—all this we look on with
gratitude and a measure of envy  
wanting to have what they’re having.
  
I am moved at three Platonic removes:  
Bach, Ma, then, far off to the side, me.

Toccata

Fingertips pull the
keys of a deaf mute
instrument before
it sighs, until it
soothes, until it thrills
and throbs.  Who can sleep
without a touch to
smooth the wrinkled sheet?
				
What I am touched by
heals me of wounds I
hardly knew I had.
What you touch you heal.
In our sensitive
carapace, sealing
in, turning out, we
are all wounds, all cures.
Originally published in Dog River Review


©2024 Robert Wexelblatt
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