Calypso Caprice (Canto Fourteen in Uly Poe's "Death of Art" Series)

When, one long-ago Fall, inside Carnegie Hall,

Perry Hartch introduced this new piece;
'twas for voices and strings -- plus preposterous things.

Perry call'd it "Calypso Caprice."

First came notes in a wail (43 to the scale)

play'd con brio assai by two flutes.

At the seventeenth bar, Hartch off-loaded a jar

of cream'd corn over ten tenor lutes.

Then the ladies who play'd 'em cried (quoting verbatim):

"You've not heard the last of us yet," 

whence each took her marimba (or shook her kalimba),

withal to make good on that threat. 

Soon there follow'd a rest (hours long, critics guess'd:

no one knows, for the audience left.)

Thus did Perry's "Caprice" undergo its decease...

Thus the musical world's left bereft.