Soul of the Violin

By Bobby Parrott

for Jacques Derrida

After a jazz concert,
the philosopher and his son,
Pierre, drive the streets 
of Chicago with a colleague
and musician, Paul de Man, 
who describes the “soul” 
of his instrument— 

That small and fragile piece 
of wood the luthier places 
within the body of the violin—
always very exposed, very
vulnerable— it both supports
the bridge and assures 
the resonant communication
between sounding boards.

A voice, a synergy 
of taught strings, drawn 
bow, a terrible love. 
Always terrible! The player's
warm hands know this, 
and yet pull the bow over
the mourning strings,

cradle the violin’s neck,
body the death mahogany 
takes, an anticipation 
of the loss, a dark honey
running into always to tip 
that sleeping tumble. 

An unbearable emptiness, 
says the violinist, but in music 
we can at least circle paradise, 
though never become. 

The philosopher sinks deeper 
into the drying leather of his seat, 
feels inside for his own soul, 
willing it into a stranger song.

Bobby Parrott's poems appear in Tilted House, RHINO, Rumble Fish Quarterly, Atticus Review, The Hopper, Rabid Oak, Diphthong, Exacting Clam, Neologism, and elsewhere. Wearing a forest-spun jacket of toy dirigibles, he dreams himself out of formlessness in the chartreuse meditation capsule known as Fort Collins, Colorado.