About…

Rachmaninov's variation on a theme of Paganini devised while in hospital and written in a couple of months at his new home in Switzerland .

---

Karen Bookguilder is intended to be a collection of poems 60 poems expressly for the Book Guild by Mike Burr - the themes being dictated by or about its published artisans .

Variations on a theme

long sharps scour the face of eager sounds
as through the box room bed
the smell of antiseptic leeched
you bleached the tunes and excised them
from the fingers of the corsair violin
on the white theatre table anaesthetised
and silver scalpel in a steady hand
the tune is cut stretched out like gut
to hang upon piano strings
when days are numbered number
forty six among the best of them
resurgent beauty settled on the key
old age and inspiration some say are never done
what they mean is never over
for somewhere long sharps scour the face
of eager strings and chords amassed
are shaking chests
though in this variation
the soloist is quiet

Sources…

---