perfect pitch

Thanks to Andrew for giving me the opportunity to blog here. It’s been fun. I’ll round off with one of my own poems, from Centuries of Skin (Ragged Raven, 2010). The line Memory has no perfect pitch comes from a poem by Pauline Stainer, The knowledge of water, in The Lady & the Hare, Bloodaxe, 2003.

Perfect Pitch

…and will memories
turn white
or thunder-grey,

will edges blur
and sing the old
half-remembered songs?

Will childhood photos
harmonise
in three dimensions

or flatten into two?

Memory
has no perfect pitch
though I recall hearing

on late-night radio
a rare recording
of the last castrato.

Over the sepia friction
his fluting voice

calling
to the twilight
of my mind.