A Poem About Miracles

Why don't the records go blank

the instant the singer dies?

Oh, I know there are explanations

but they don't convince me

I'm still surprised

When I hear the dead singing

As for orchestra's

I expect the Instruments

To fall silent one by one

as the musicians succumb

to cancer and heart disease

so that toward the end

I turn on a disc

labelled Gotterdammerung

and all that comes out

is the sound of one sick old man

scraping a shaky bow

across an out-of-tune fiddle.