Death of a Clarinet

 

Today I threw my clarinet away.

Its grain was like the faded coat

Of some sick black beast, its keys were blind:

Dulled, filmed, spent; fire and burnish quenched,

Its throat was silent, stilled through lack of use.

Where was that sensual longing

Turned  by Mozart enchantments into sound?

I threw my clarinet away today.

 

The snap of key on hole, the cork muffling

Its fall, and cork on all those joints  –

It’s thinned in each place like an old man’s skin.

I cannot twist the aching parts

Of this neglected body into place.

So instead I stroke the mouthpiece,

My finger catching where I used to chew.

My clarinet I threw away today.

 

No single reed will wake this silent form.

A box from some Paris workshop

Lies where it’s slept for years in its grey bed,

The lining of a broken case,

Sides split, catch slipped.  It hasn’t made a sound

For forty years.  Clarinets now

Aren’t made of wood.   Plastic is tough; endures.

Today I threw my clarinet away.

 

Why keep it?  Who can bring it back to life?

It died so long ago, it needs

Simple burial in a rubbish sack.

Let’s face the end of life.  Once supple, we

Don’t re-assemble any more

To be what once we were; the sounds we make

Aren’t silken like Prokofiev’s cat.

I threw my clarinet away today.

 

I will be now forever doing this,

I know, until my voice is dumb.

I’ll never play my clarinet again.

I’ll never read those books.  Take them,

Give them to those you love; give them to those

You’ll never know, before they fade

And fester, like this dying beast  –

My clarinet I threw away today.