What happens when music grows legs
and walks around the room, picking

lint off a lapel, or sweeping glass
from a shelf? And the reverse,

the embroidered hem of a bathmat
transforms into staves and clefs, ornamentation,

sharps and flats. Cracks in the wall. The text
of an obituary. All is music, everywhere, notations

altering each second into another song.
Play the notes and it is incoherent nonsense,

but it is in dissonance that we discover
the brilliant. The wasp struggling

to be free of a web. A lash evading
capture in a glassy eye. A leaky

syringe catching light. For a composer, the great
symphony is termed genius only after death.

Before that, a jumble of chords and crashing
slurs. Patrons run out into the street, covering their ears.