Portrait of Hegel's Wife in Treble 

                … and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.
                — George Eliot, Middlemarch 

She watched him chase it
across his violin, the furious bow
swirling around the tune,
the sound winding
outside—and then under
it—before returning to the known
notation. The gentleman
to her left spoke of migraines
to the woman she had been
when absorbed in fiddler's melody.

And when it ended, she excused
herself from the demands of his spirit
and ventured into the street to be
eaten by stars and throttled
by the meteor of the secret text
she'd scribbled over her breasts
in black eyeliner before the concert.
The wife survives in those earlier.
variants. The poem is the mess, hidden
beneath the dress. She watched
him chase it over the bow then
back to the known. He found
her taking off her shoes near the fountain,
her forehead pressed against the symphony's
statue, her lips opening
an ellipsis of laughter.