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Max -come you could learn the fiddle or a drum perhaps 
This has a feel of but for the grace go I
Cheers P off out with my fiddle 

-----Original Message-----
From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Max Richards
Sent: 22 August 2007 01:53
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: snap: Last Night in Lygon Street

Last Night in Lygon Street
 

Hear that fiddle, quavery
but singing a familiar tune?
ŒGreensleeves¹ - so evergreen.

To its wordless melody
phrases float up from
my imperfect memory.

She¹s jilted him, he¹s lilting on ­
the other words, I¹ve never quite
got them sorted out.

Keening through the dusk
above the traffic noise, it¹s
some busking violinist
 
under the Lygon Street
curving tin verandas
by the flower stall ­ look,

isn¹t the fiddler man
familiar too? ­ 
old colleague, McCann
 
(philosophy, retired),
still with the sad face
and the gaberdine mac.
 
Pension (I might ask)
not enough? Neither¹s
mine ­ I ought to busk

myself, but lack the tools,
the nerve, the skills.
And there¹s not much in his hat -

how much could he earn?
Honestly, this smallish coin
is all I can spare him.

I sidle past unrecognised.
Could it be money¹s not
what he¹s after, but to test

some theory once sketched
in ethics class, when someone
objected: 'In the real world...'?

Or in aesthetics,
what if the less-skilled version
moves one more than the most?

Wednesday 22 August 2007
Max Richards
Doncaster, Victoria


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