wrote for the future and lived in an organized present

Oh to be Charles Ives, who wrote for the future 

and lived in an organized present, 

who filed away each symphony 

in a leather sleeve and took the train 

from a garden house in Connecticut 

to a seat at a corporate desk. Think of Mozart, 

wild with sorrow, dodging debtors, out of work, 

and Ives is on his train ride watching trees arrange their boughs. 

He hasn't had a concert in twenty years, 

and there he is, beating out dissonant lines 

on his two pressed lapels. 

He's not the cat that ate the bright canary 

but the cat who holds the bright canary live 

inside the mouth. He's the cat that feels it breathing, 

the cat that will not speak or smile, 

the cat that godly patience fills with peace. 

 

[Mandy Kahn, 'Ives', from The Best American Poetry 2018]