All Our Music Is Instantly Clear For The World

All Our Music Is Instantly Clear For The World
after Ave Atque Vale

There was a hornet on the headphones
when I reached for them;
it paced the perimeter of one,
then the other, imitating its prey by

cross-pollinating left to right, fumbling
for the nectary, anther, sigma;
but finding the rutted-wood timbre
of Michael Hamburger’s voice.

Four lines in, at the mention of bees
it struck its antennae to the black disk,
like a dowsing rod or spy set ticking, to render
the meaning of ‘no bee molest these petals’.

Coerced into a jar, it tested the rim,
head butting the metre of the poem
drumming ‘are, are, are, are’ into the glass
as I played Ave Atque Vale again.

The poem that opened on the page
trod water, hardly touching the sides.
I took the insistent hornet out,
shook it onto the paving slabs,

disorientated, everything else
suddenly larger than it expected.
I almost pitied it: it had only tricked
me upstairs by relativity and surprise.

Not so still now, the thrum whirred
up inside it, like the rhythm
still palatable through the office window,
the last lines’ bid with iam and trochee.

(Here is a link to the poem: http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=189)