Eyes lidded, breath calm as a cradle.
The slightest silent metronomic motion
lifts his face, as if waking from a dream,
as if having mumbled a murmured amen
for a prayer he needn’t have prayed.
Such hands could crush a woman’s heart.
Such fingers could carve faults into stone,
Pry apart cogs, jaws, teeth of factories,
crumble mortice locks, or shatter bone,
but his
anoint the heavy trodden keys,
soften, settle. Listen! He breathes
and the first note of his reprise
begins.
Such cadence alters the beating of the heart.
From a promontory of black and white slabs,
Strung taught with wire, all in a row,
Rises ecstasy itself, making drunk the air
And quiet eyes moist in adoration.
Each note, a wholehearted assent
His face flickers with such content
For this polonaisical compliment.
He courts the keys, woos them,
Teaches them to sing, to break
Like hurricane waves on a stunned
Chromatic shore. The more
He plays, the more
Impossible this is, these precisions
unfathomable faultless tender decisions
Which dance in air like elated visions.
He is a teller of tales, an oracle
Who, unmoving, rises, lifts himself,
With furious and tender violence.
He creates a reason to break the silence.
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