Listening to Mahler’s Fifth, or, How to Be a Blind Poet

Book Cover of "Planet of the Blind" by Steve Kuusisto

 

Perhaps as a poet said, there really is a tale lit by the soft light of sleep. “Perhaps” grows around the house like birches. Perhaps there’s a meadow where the dead dogs frolic. I’ll never give away perhaps. A fritillary lands on the unpainted porch, having returned just now to earth through a black sieve.

 

**

 

 

It rains in the apple trees

Where a crow settles

In a dome of blossoms—

 

I watch him

With my clear head

The way blind people do…

 

**

 

But the music. Nobility. Dignified growth of the man. No more hunched shoulders.

And Mahler, always an intruder, never welcomed, little Bohemian, as a boy, conducting the birch trees…

 

 

 

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Author: stevekuusisto

Poet, Essayist, Blogger, Journalist, Memoirist, Disability Rights Advocate, Public Speaker, Professor, Syracuse University

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