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Many years ago, for what reason I have no idea, I became interested in golf. Not to play (that came later, disastrously), but to watch. So it was that I found myself one Sunday afternoon on the last day of one of the major tournaments, watching Jack Nicklaus on the final hole of the day, preparing to putt for a birdie and the win. He went through the expected prepwork—studied the slope of the green, probably stuck a finger in the air to test the wind, consulted with his caddy. And then he addressed the ball, and simply stood there, not moving. I recall at the time thinking how odd it was that he was taking such a long time. Perhaps he was making sure his hands were in the right position, that his feet were the proper distance apart, reminding himself of all the things that his years of discipline had taught him. It was only much later that I realized he had been seeking the exact opposite, a Zen-like spontaneity, which you capture perfectly in the line

Hold while I can in an elusive state of just existing --
without gripping tension, without grasping concentration.


It truly is an elusive state, the paradox being that the more we strive to attain it, the farther from our grasp it recedes. You describe a musical performance where

A river of melody flows without thought.

and where harmonies are no longer a collection of separate notes vibrating in phase with each other, but instead, a single sound, where the distinction between music and musician falls away and

Music becomes the felt shape of fingers, spread of hands,
clear tones ringing through my bones,
the surrounding prickle of minute vibrations on skin.


Eastern mystics retreat to a mountaintop and dedicate their whole lives pursuing such a transcendent state, one that carries you

...soaring in spirals and swirls on a beaded string,

It's the freedom Krishnamurti spoke of, where subject and object meld into a single, timeless moment, lasting only until

...the tenuous bubble of relaxed focus pops,

and we once again become aware of ourselves and the experience, separate ourselves out from it, and reenter the flow of time.

My mind left out wakes up and slides back into gear.
I am distracted by other subjects.


The challenge for the poet, in attempting to capture such an experience, is how to avoid turning it into just one more thing, something to be noted, studied, and assigned a category, like all the other things that distract us.

While your language is strong, as always, and you have some nice turns of phrase—

Sharps and flats slip from their place in the nets,
wash out of pattern like confetti,


is one that I particularly liked—it is overall prosaic, in that its purpose is to describe and narrate something apart from the language itself. Prose is what we get when experience is translated into words that have been filtered through the logic banks of our analytical mind. Poetry has the potential to bring words closer to the experience itself, to evoke the experience rather than simply explain it.

It's fair to ask if such a thing is possible, to describe the transcendent potential in music whether listening or performing. As you put it, music

recreates the song of poetry's emotions without words.

Are there words up to the task? Your title suggests not. A negative statement defines nothing, offers nothing for us to grasp, merely eliminates elements from consideration. We now know one thing that music is not; perhaps you suggest that there are no words that capture what it is, or the essence of our involvement with it. Is there such a poem? Are there words that evoke pure experience, without the defining filters we use to explain the world and our place in it? If so, they most likely wouldn't be as carefully considered, as perfectly structured and as clearly understandable as the lines in this poem. But then, that would be a different poem, while this one does what it sets out to do and does it well. If it leaves us wanting, that's not the poem's fault. It is our own recognition of how fleeting and frail such moments are, and how the distractions of our lives conspire to deny us the joy they offer.

By the way, Nicklaus sank the putt.
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