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The Musician
They've told me MacAuley is gone now
Taking his tool-box and both his fiddles.
They are saying, 'What will we do now?
There is no music in this or the next parish.'
Until a replacement is found there
Not one note will be heard after whist
Unless it is played from a record -
That, even the young say, won't be as good.
They will talk of MacAuley for ever there,
Long after their own receipt of pensions,
Of his carpenter's wrist on the fiddle-box
Stitching like mad through jig-time.
And so I have heard on the telephone
MacAuley is gone now, and both his fiddles
Lie in their cases under the stairs
With the music we never knew he could read.
It is Beethoven and Bach, they tell me,
And a very fat volume, a German tutor,
That cost six shillings before the war,
And its pages, they tell me, are black with notes.
It's your carpenter's wrist they remember
In love with your local tradition.
Your carpenter's fist could not break through
To the public of Bach and Beethoven.
So they've told me MacAuley is gone,
Both his fiddles lie under the stairs now
With music by Bach and Beethoven
Beside six bob's worth of ambition.
Let them open your window frames, open your doors,
Think, as they sit on their mended chairs,
Of you, their musician, and doctor to wood,
that no one has heard what you understood.
Dunn Douglas