Unidentified Music

Free will's a silky flame, persists

when ice must grind me in its fists,
conundrum I can't leave alone,
the lobby-talk along my bone.

My eye was on my chisel-work
an afternoon was growing dark
as butter-pats of kauri curled 
and my small workshop radio trawled

a tumult of orchestral strings.
How then that sudden quieting
by which one small exquisite tune
flickered from the bruit just gone

and in the instant of the change 
forgiveness was no longer strange?