A Poem for a Thursday #241

Amy Lowell (1874-1925) was a poet, translator, and editor. She made it her mission to help people become more aware of trends in poetry. She herself wrote more than 650 poems over approximately a dozen years. Lowell frequently wrote in a non-metrical style that she felt was suited to the English language and everyday speech. Lowell died at the age of 51. She was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry the following year. An obituary tribute to her said, “She was upon the surface of things a Lowell, a New Englander and a spinster. But inside everything was molten like the core of the earth…Given one more gram of emotion, Amy Lowell would have burst into flame and been consumed to cinders.”

The neighbor sits in his window and plays the flute.
From my bed I can hear him,
And the round notes flutter and tap about the room,
And hit against each other,
Blurring to unexpected chords.
It is very beautiful,
With the little flute-notes all about me,
In the darkness.

In the daytime
The neighbor eats bread and onions with one hand
And copies music with the other.
He is fat and has a bald head,
So I do not look at him,
But run quickly past his window.
There is always the sky to look at,
Or the water in the well!

But when night comes and he plays his flute,
I think of him as a young man,
With gold seals hanging from his watch,
And a blue coat with silver buttons.
As I lie in my bed
The flute notes push against my ears and lips,
And I go to sleep, dreaming.

Music 
Amy Lowell