A tribute to the Piano in three movements

Prelude



She had enthusiasm strung as though each passing moment were a landing felted hammer prompting it to sing, shining through her eyes in such a way that sometimes made me feel that I could see pieces of myself in her reflection.

I'd see her now and then, she was
that familiar tune that reenters your ears on occasion, unbidden, always welcome.

One day, I was playing, shaping sounds and volumes from the discrete set of keys before me. Finishing, I was surprised to hear, Oh, don't stop! Keep playing! The voice came from under the piano. I thought I'd heard a noise before, as though someone sliding under, but I didn't think they'd stay this long.

She peeked out and up at me like a baby bird.
Ah. I was glad that she was the one who'd been listening from below - I know that that's the best seat in the house: Under the piano.

That was last year. Today,
she showed me this poem:

First Movement

Under The Piano
by Ken Weisner
for Kit

There is nothing better than listening
to Debussy's Claire du Lune,
under your piano.
Students who are leaving you
go under their last day
and listen to you
play for them.
It's how you say goodbye.

The piano sits in the corner
of the small carpeted front room,
a Baldwin baby-grand
next to my Grandmother's 100-year-old
German side-table with lions' paws.
You have them dive right back there
into the dark corner
right beneath the bass strings. In a way,

a piano is a horrifying thing;
this black angel's coffin
could come thumping down
and kill someone.
You and a student rode it out there
during the big quake;
a bookshelf full of music
smashed the bench,
stopping inches from the keys.

When I arrived home yesterday,
you were playing Rachmaninoff's Prelude in G Minor.
I don't know why--I didn't even break stride--
just went right under
to close my eyes awhile
after a long day.

It's cozy, actually,
relaxing and warm
even for those who normally don't prefer the floor.
Oh, I love this part... a dramatic downward run:
descending diminished seventh chords in octaves
proclaim a minor key, some triumph in exile
turned sumptuous, modulating back now upward in thirds....

And though I am not your student
and you are not saying goodbye,
how good it is that you are playing now
for me! sprawled on the old carpet
appreciating every heady consonance
but also every jangly overtone
and percussive distortion,
the hilarious volume and vivid harmonics;
no, not even a kiss can do this.
And as in love,
even the mistakes are glorious,
blunt thunder.

And then when you go a long time without missing a note,
how marvelous--what a miracle--
transported by virtuosity
into the composer's heart, or is it your heart?
or is it my own?
Oh, terrible exile;
oh wonderful life!

And such a private place, sacred: the piano
filling the sky.
So what happens? The wonder
mixes with the love, music, and privacy
to form
shameless ecstasy,
a fortune so difficult to find these days
in nature, church, politics,
or even the theater.

It may not be God, but I feel loved
and you feel loved.
All the better because neither
the machine nor the interpreter
is perfect,
but the resulting chaos might be
the best thing in life.

And having married the piano player
so many stormy years ago,
now, without sentimentality but in
the presence of
Rachmaninoff--
so much meaning--
and hearing the wonderful sense
in the sound, mouth set in its slight smirk,
as usual slightly disappointed at the world...
I for once do the logical thing:
nothing--just lie there
and weep through the whole recap and coda,
silently, shamelessly, for the ecstasy of it.


Second Movement

Vivaldi's Sposa son disprezzata
by Ken Weisner


"il mio sposo, il mio amor,
la mia speranza."

In this song about a faithful wife
betrayed (che feci mai, what did I do),
I was astonished at how
the spare single verse and brief refrain
made one particular word
take flight within its vowel: sper-ahhhh-nza.

It flew!
In a six minute song, on the warm
current of grief, the soprano
soared again and again
a full thirty seconds
just on the updraft
of that one vowel,

as if the meaning of the song weren't grief at all,
but rather the possibility of
hope,
as if singing
were making, naming
her grief.

She was too good for him.
How freely and completely
she flew! Over and over,
veiled, yet soaring,
for as long as her breath would hold.

Third Movement

In Memorium
by Tracy Mehoke

There’s a boy at the piano
The piano that I love to coax a voice from
The piano that turns deft fingers
and minute internal tensions
into song

He’s playing the piano
And the air is thick with music
Not smoke
Music
In the SU
Everyone else hears it, too
The air is thick with our thoughts,
reading about images
and Lucretius
and swirling atoms and void
I’m not sure how acclimatized they are
to breathing atmospheric music
But I feel the music in my lungs
as if
my hands are the ones at the piano
and my arms are shaping it into
just the right size
to breathe out on the keys.

As if my wrists and fingertips
are pressed into the keys,
my palms conduct a symphony of levers
Before my eyes,
black and white
transforming into marble in my hands.

Breathing in, the music
is a radiantly churning cloud
Supporting on all sides.
From this height, I can see in

The last notes dissolve
The clouds drift away
and other conversations
become noticeable
as gradually
everyone remembers
their previous life
and wakes up from cloudy dreams.
The air thins
Now it’s just atoms and void
without the swirl
Now it smells
more like smoke

My head clears
And once again, I’m
within walls
with windows to see out
not a cloud, but a couch.
ba-da-
the door rests in its frame again


The piano is still,
a monument,
a nudging reminder
of something seen in dreams



Fin