The Masque of the Harpist’s Death

Never again say the symphony took your breath away.
No more joking! Not today. The cellists in the big city
fight their way through putrid smog to the auditorium.
Urban wildfires burn your house and squeeze your lungs,
you know this and still think you’ll hear the fire bird
make peace with a water moccasin, a resolution caught
in vague harp strings of your mind. You’ll still have to
emerge into the miasma. Watch babies gasp. Get used to
strains of compromised lungs. We live there now.