Music in the Afternoon

Until your cleated foot strikes the step
like a glottal stop;
for two hours
in the late afternoon
music plays through the house.

Lunga Pausa
fear
the key turns
yet behind wads of asbestos
our cantata strums the tear-moist air
of our hiding place in the eves.

Finally I disarm you with my pen
all of us are a bundle of nerves
once you cleave the bone
and par down the muscle.

I wonder is there anything left
beneath the hate and waste
sonatas. Would I feel unwanted
if the music had played on
a little longer or lived
in the same fungating fear we knew
when everything was dropped; the
instruments laid down, the
cellist stopped rubbing
resin on the horsehair bow.