First dull the ear that craves pure tone.
As gravity warps the path of light,
so harmony must bend each one.

Learn to accept, when things fall flat
or sharpness hangs in air, the ruse
we know as equal temperament,

that necessary compromise.
No instrument whose pitch is set
can follow if you trade your muse.

Yet sometimes when you stop the fret
a god arrives under the wire,
and for an instant you can get

those overtones you used to hear
an unexpected telegram
singing the music of the spheres.

Andrew Sofer is an associate professor of English at Boston College and the author of The Stage Life of Props (2003). His poem is written in terza rima (aba, bcb, cdc). The form, found in Dante’s Divine Comedy, is uncommon in English.

Read more by Andrew Sofer