I shall pick up and play the violin
my hopeful great-uncle made for me
out of seventy-odd planished bits of maple,

its scrolled head a ruby-tinted fern.
It sailed across the ocean in a coffin
and is still stretched out in a velvet box,

the E string snapped like a sawn cable.
A musician who played it judged it a fine
big-voiced burly fiddle

though with a wolf note in the upper reaches.
Wolf note to which I’m perfectly attuned.