Music Envy

This poem appears in the Winter 2018 issue of Modern Age. To subscribe now, go here.

Composers have it best. Some dimmish light—
Offenbach, Saint-Saens—hits upon a phrase,
Two minutes in the playing, and it stays
To warm our years and grant the flightless flight.
Music is what I love best but can’t write,
Since math has always made my poor eyes glaze.
Now, meter, I’ve had since my earliest days.
My toes count off all day and half the night.
My verse has feet then, but I think no wings.
(This groundedness must show my words at last
Weigh something.) Would I change my state with kings?
No, William, just with Beethovens and Bachs,
All those whose ear-arithmetic surpassed
Angels in flight but gripped the earth like rocks.

Donald Mace Williams is a retired newspaper writer and editor. His poems have run or will soon run in American Arts Quarterly online, Anglican Theological Review, National Review, Barrow Street, the Raintown Review, and other magazines. His rhymed narrative “Wolfe,” a ranchland retelling of the Beowulf story, ran in Rattle and was published as a chapbook the following year. He has a PhD in English from the University of Texas.