Die Zauberflöte

I could have been nine or ten maybe
at a school concert with a wooden flute
and I played the bird-man's tune
where he wants “a maiden or a little wife,”
a tune I'd heard grown-ups singing
who knew about things like that —
serious couples shambling through stage-props
ahead of dragons, sometimes helped by a lovely
Queen who might have been a witch
or a High Priest nobody talked back to
but they just went on believing.
The lovers all end up together but the story
never says what they do to each other afterwards.
I played my flute, wanting not to know.
Just slid my breath into a deepening tunnel
like a dungeon stippled with high windows
opening or shutting each moment.
Somehow the tune crept out but didn't
stay long. Grown-ups smiled in the audience.
They took me home with them into stories
they didn't know they were telling.