In Whose Unctions

By now the snow is easing

the live nerves of the wire fence

and the firs,

                              softening the distances it falls through,

laying down a rightness,

as in the spackled whites,

the woodgrains of a room’s hush

                                                                  before music,

before a lush legato in whose unctions

the excruciations ease,

                                            as in the first

thick arrhythmics from the hardwoods

                                                                        of the late quartets,

whose dense snow of emotion,

                                                         downdrifting,

formal,

                 whose violins and cellos,

desiring the exhilarations of changes,

                                                                          turn loose an infusion

of wintry music, all sideslip and immense descent,

repetitions, evolutions

salving down into the still air,

                                                         the wound,

the listening.