It is like watching Yehudi Menuhin on television.
You see a round face,
mute, busy,
with the look in the eyes
people have when they’re paying
close attention, but not
visual attention.
Next to the face, tipped up from the chin
and near enough to the mouth to make your
view seem intimate, what with the musician’s
folded handkerchief (almost as if for dribble)
is something with a curved edge, about as big as
the face, soft in one instance, hard in the other; your breast, or
the violin. It is a crowded picture because
also, in the closeup, is the conductor’s elbow, or
your own, which often gets in the way
(especially if you’re lying down to nurse) and which looked,
on television, as though it might
bump into the violin, although, of course,
it must actually have been well in front.
Your arm is in back of your breast.
You don’t feel the milk coming out,
nor see it;
what you see is someone else
drinking—thwarted music: played
elsewhere. When the milk,
however, starts to flow freely,
after the baby’s been sucking for twenty seconds,
you feel, for a moment, as though your breasts
have been inflated, and you get that
sweet tension in your throat—as if there’s something good
that you can’t remember.