Preludes by Emily Cullen

On holidays, my son has chosen to purchase

a novelty back scratcher which he delights 

in tendering to tickle. The slim green rod 

with small metal hand and fingers

reminds me of the ink-soaked rastrum

Bach’s sons raked across his manuscripts

in readiness for new cantatas. Before stave 

paper was invented, their five-nibbed pen 

of brass marked five lines, four spaces. They 

scratched those rastra fast on his tabula rasa

blank pages awaiting clef and staff, and when 

ink dried, transposed their father’s fugues. 

A vision of their patient preparation to 

score his baroque notation titillates in 

symphonies of possibility across ages

___________

Emily Cullen is an award-winning writer from Galway. She is the Meskell Poet in Residence at the University of Limerick, where she teaches Creative Writing and English. Emily has published three collections: Conditional Perfect (Doire Press, 2019), In Between Angels and Animals (Arlen House, 2013) and No Vague Utopia (Ainnir Publishing, 2003) and is working on her fourth.