Reading this, you are waiting for the curtain
        To go up on a glade, vistaed valley
Or colonnade of lath. Yet you are not here
        To view a painting—the painted thing
Like the written word, is there for the hearing—
        To which end the tympanist stretches his ear
To interrogate a drumskin, hangs over
        Undistracted by bell note or forest murmur
In horn and harp. Cellist pursues
        An intent colloquy with his instrument,
Urging nerve and string up to that perfection
        He may falter at. For, the aria done,
It is he alone who must comment on
        The meaning of it, and bars he is testing now
Climb then on a faultless bow
        Out of the darkened pit as the hero pauses
To resume in song. He, too, unseen
        Sweating into his paint, runs through
(In mind, that is) the perils of a part
        That from start to finish (and this is true
Of every bubble and iota of these tuning notes)