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© Wendy Bardsley 2014
How could she have thought
that playing the coquette with Schubert
would have been enough?
Her maid, I held my secret close.
The Countess did not know.
His music raged inside my bones.
I trembled in corridors yearning.
My skirts were heavy as I climbed the stairs.
I tingled to the sound of his melodies,
those sustained notes;
the sharp edge of his need.
I had to have him now! And now!
So shun me if he must.
He could do what he would -
`Sie heist -
He claimed me daily, his instrument.
The fever of his kiss,
his urgency,
was harmony -
but for the blood.
And I must have its swollen flood, its song.
No pastorale. No dream.
This was his fire!
Though somewhere in its ravishment
I felt the tread of death;
a minor key ...
It was self-
to have taken him like that.
No other man can hold me now
without I do not think of him.