Author: [[Nick Roberts]] --- # Performance notes *Ives' Unanswered Question, mysterious, metaphysical distress* # Mutability I, not a boy playing jacks for a gentleman’s cane or the cane of a rake gloved in his sedan chair, but I, an old horse long in the snout flat like a nail in a lamp-room floor. Every year—the moment—how to hold it down as steady and as sturdy as that nailhead? I always think the days will be somehow changed or cease to have a spot on the calendar at all. As many frowns as I can send, my love, to help and cure your nausea and my back. I wouldn’t freeze the assets that you hold in my pianoteeth, the bruise on my right side, or the pretty musicians quickly shuffling out of town and into the fireplace.