The title suggests the poem is a response to the music of Tord Gustavsen, and it reads less like a story than an attempt to put the experience of listening into words. Nothing is narrated. Instead, the poem follows how sound moves: an echo "travels inward," listening is "astute," and cymbals produce a "breath" rather than a crash. The speaker seems absorbed, attentive, almost hushed.
The images keep blending hearing with touch and sight. Softness has a "shadowy filter," sound rests on "silken skin," and dust settles over "dancing diligence." By the end, the music is pictured as half-lit light inside a hall's "skeletal encasing," as if the sound has turned into an empty, dimly lit building. The mood is quiet, intimate and a little melancholy, with a feeling of stillness. The fragmented lines and missing punctuation make you slow down and listen the way the speaker does, letting the meaning gather by suggestion rather than being spelled out.