Absinthe

Fastidious with his tea,

Satie toys with a key —

one key, one note

learned by rote

in the punctilious smoke

of the infinite joke,

drowned in the shuffles

sawdust muffles

of death rattles

from memory’s tatters

and tattle-tailers

that gossip battles.

Wistful melancholy

in the Christmas holly.

Satie keeps the blank

slate blank so the dust

can encrust each ledge

with the sage prophesies

of dust spelling dust

across the white keys

a piano bank needs blank

to attain ecstasies of pause

before the final cause

hesitates to close,

pounds, then pounds,

then hits a pause, then pounds.

What is melancholy

without a dash of irony?

Satie takes a drop

of absinthe in his cup,

and absence dissolves —

the madeleine absolves

the silence of God

within goldenrod,

in fragments of dress

whose keys redress

this tentative touch,

evoking ash to attach

shadows of the missing

to shadows of the living,

as Satie comes to know

God hears only an echo.

Is melancholy cold when old

or warm when retold?