This next one is still really new, really future.
It's so future, I haven't really made up my mind
about the title.
I'm terrible about titles.
I tend to write them last, only when I
have to put some handle up there at the top.
So this one I'm not too happy about.
So if you have any better suggestions
let me know afterward over punch.
Right now I'm calling it Reprise,
but I don't like that anymore.
I liked it a month ago, but I don't like it.
It's in three sections.
You probably know already that embochure
is the position that the mouth takes on the instrument.
I'm going to read this one for Lois.
Reprise.
One.
You cannot see the horns from where you sit,
only another row in common black.
When their clear melody comes in to represent a grieving heart,
it will do so as a brook rushing over stones,
approximates a flock of birds rising or, as the peacock,
sounds like human speech.
Now, the empty instruments are raised to attention
as I open the first cadenza.
The weight of my arms and shoulders striking the keys,
keys in turn hammering the hidden strings, driving triumph
from the concert grand,
and when the multiple voices join,
when the horns in that famous passage surprise you,
it seems we've touched the vocal center of the world.
The audience is a blur on my right, musicians on my left
as I face into the wings across the keyboard
and its broad extension.
Playing, I have no more choices to be made.
Playing, I am no one.
Two.
A child sits on the round embroidered stool
screwed to its full height, a box
over the pedals for her feet.
The wooden lip is raised and she taps at the row of teeth.
Suddenly, a passage from memory, and a bird
startles into its territorial cry.
Then she hesitates, tries an accidental.
This is the hard part, the new part,
she doesn't like to make mistakes.
Thinking his opinion matters, the teacher
clicks the rhythm with a pencil, but I
would like to move those fingers by remote control
to make her go ahead, take a chance, play something.
The piano itself seems to grow impatient,
waiting as the tired upright waited for me
in the damp Victorian parlor,
a secret under its fringed shawl,
the songs in the fat book almost in reach.
Three.
I didn't simply stop getting better.
Pushing a stone, one cannot stop on a hill.
The dancer's legs, the poised embochure
want to be part of a sleeping animal.
I can still name the train's declining note, the pitch
growing flat as it recedes.
On the street in a crowd I can duplicate the chord
implied beneath a random noise.
So much music in the universe, in the practice halls,
or in the deadened air of their small carrels,
apart from us, musicians are laboring,
themselves the instruments.
It is a service.
And like the tired wife who never
meant to forswear her chosen joy,
I merely gave a lesser portion of myself, poco a poco,
until my hands no longer strained against the leash
and then no longer could outrun my eye
and soon, soon I could not even bear to listen.