The Piano Player Explains Himself

The Piano Player Explains Himself

by Allen Grossman

When the corpse revived at the funeral,

The outraged mourners killed it; and the soul

Of the revenant passed into the body

Of the poet because it had more to say.

He sat down at the piano no one could play

Called Messiah, or The Regulator of the World,

Which had stood for fifty years, to my knowledge,

Beneath a painting of a red-haired woman

In a loose gown with one bared breast, and played

A posthumous work of the composer S——

About the impotence of God (I believe)

Who has no power not to create everything.

It was the Autumn of the year and wet,

When the music started.  The musician was

Skillful but the Messiah was out of tune

And bent the time and the tone.  For a long hour

The poet played The Regulator of the World

As the spirit prompted, and entered upon

The pathways of His power—while the mourners

Stood with slow blood on their hands

Astonished by the weird processional

And the undertaker figured his bill.

—We have in mind an unplayed instrument

Which stands apart in a memorial air

Where the room darkens toward its inmost wall

And a lady hangs in her autumnal hair

At evening of the November rains; and winds

Sublime out of the North, and North by West,

Are sowing from the death-sack of the seed

The burden of her cloudy hip.  Behold,

I send the demon I know to relieve your need,

An imperfect player at the perfect instrument

Who takes in hand The Regulator of the World

To keep the splendor from destroying us.

Lady!  The last virtuoso of the composer S——

Darkens your parlor with the music of the Law.

When I was green and blossomed in the Spring

I was mute wood.  Now I am dead I sing.