Sooner or later, vertigo absconds with time,
the fear of falling always underfoot,
the past a step ahead.

It seems romantic, if it isn’t you,
to course desire full circle,
pursue the woman and her Spanish ghost,

descend a whirlpool into ecstasy.
But panic on a spiral staircase
is just the overture. Death is the climax

for Herrmann’s strings. A silence follows.
Mozart cannot break through.

by Robert E. Wood