Читать книгу Compass and Clock - David Sanders - Страница 8

Pianos

I saw them as a child,

in the houses of people my parents knew,

each one sulking in a darkened room

beneath arrangements of family portraits.

There I’d lift the lip

that pouted over chipped and yellowed teeth

and slightly press the lowest key

enough so that the bass note hummed through me.

I never heard the hours

of tortured practice or those mornings when

dusting hands stopped to tour again

the foreign shore of a half-remembered strain.

So much that wasn’t played,

the silence resonating like the dusk

that ushers out the fall, and yet

the portraits in their frames have multiplied.

Furniture now of friends,

undisturbed and undisturbing, the strings

ease further out of tune against

the padded hammers waiting to be sprung.