Musicians Rehearsing al fresco

They hold down their music with plastic clothes-pegs

(the light, April wind blustering adagio assai

over the paddock where newly-born lambs are grazing);

First Violin flicks blossom from his Cremona fiddle

with birthday-cake fingers, while Fräulein D’Amore

picks out In an English Country Garden, a tempo giusto,

on her viola. Madame Svoboda curses the barbed wire

that threatens her cellocase, and measures the horsehair

of her second-best bow against some bayard strands

caught on the fence-snaggings. From the milking sheds

rise the clatter of harpsichords and a flute trilling

and falling, the first flutter of conversations

between brass and woodwind. The Violins, grown impatient,

exchange glances, rapping music stands. The Estate trees

flurry, and heave to attention. The bows drop in fury.

They savage the notes off the stave, like mad dogs.

JOHN GOHORRY