Chitra Ganesh, How to Assemble a Flying Car (detail), 2018, linocut on tan BFK Rives. Courtesy of the artist & Durham Press.
Late Quartet
The second violin is a beautiful woman, Korean,
in a skin tight black dress, whose entire
body expresses every note she plays
but the real action, alas, is in the square
suit named Pigeon, the first violin.
The passion that pours from him leaves
him looking unmoved, untouched. His thin
face is pinched into a dead smile while she heaves
and lunges through her dull repeats, repeats.
How contained this storm is, in its little crock.
This crock contains, however, seven oceans
and all the continents except ice-locked
Antarctica, with its penguins, its fabulous narwhal,
its groaning ice, all deplorably unmusical.
Barry Goldensohn (1937–2023) published six poetry collections and numerous essays. His last book was a volume of poems about music, The Listener Aspires to the Condition of Music. His work appeared in The New York Review of Books, AGNI, Salmagundi, and elsewhere. Goldensohn taught at Goddard College, Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Hampshire College, and Skidmore College.