Buzz Blog

In honor of National Poem Month,and Poem in Your Pocket Day today, I'm posting a sweet poem instead of my usual spiel about what's on the playlist---

All you need to know about this week's playlist is that it's smooth; I like every song on it, I like them so much that I wrote a sonnet.

Okay, for the real poem now. Enough of my botched attempt and second-grade stanza writing (but the bit about every song on the playlist being good is true).

The French Horn

by Jane Hirshfield

For a few days only,

the plum tree outside the window

shoulders perfection.

No matter the plums will be small,

eaten only by squirrels and jays.

I feast on the one thing, they on another,

the shoaling bees on a third.

What in this unpleated world isn’t someone’s seduction?

The boy playing his intricate horn in Mahler’s Fifth,

in the gaps between playing,

turns it and turns it, dismantles a section,

shakes from it the condensation

of human passage. He is perhaps twenty.

Later he takes his four bows, his face deepening red,

while a girl holds a viola’s spruce wood and maple

in one half-opened hand and looks at him hard.

Let others clap.

These two, their ears still ringing, hear nothing.

Not the shouts of bravo, bravo,

not the timpanic clamor inside their bodies.

As the plum’s blossoms do not hear the bee

nor taste themselves turned into storable honey

by that sumptuous disturbance.

4.26

Civil Twilight

The State Room, 638 S. State, 8 p.m., $14

4.28

Washed Out

The Urban Lounge, 241 S. 500 East, 9 p.m.

4.29

M83

In the Venue, 219 S. 600 West, 7 p.m.

Lambchop

The State Room, 8 p.m.

5.2

The Black Keys

Maverik Center, 3200 S. Decker Lake Drive, 7:30 p.m.