I'm painting the apartment, elaborate project,
edging doorways and bookcases,
two coats at least, and on the radio
–the cable opera station–something
I don't know, Handel's Semele,
and either it's the latex fumes or the music itself
but I seem never to have heard anything so radiant,
gorgeous rising tiers of it
ceasing briefly then cascading again,
as if baroque music were a series of waterfalls
pouring in the wrong direction, ...
from THEORY OF INCOMPLETION, by Mark Doty, in Fire to Fire, new and selected poems