How long is it since I lifted the piano’s heavy lid,
such a challenge in childhood
to lift it without squashing your fingers,
a present from my mother’s parents
who weren’t rich enough
to buy a piano inscribed with a solid German name,
like Bach’s grave in Leipzig.
It would be better for the poem if the name Iberia
was inscribed on the piano
but instead it has the name of some russian city.
How long is it since I lifted the piano’s heavy lid
and seen white keys offer an embarrassed smile like an old man I know
who’s become old from head to toe
but whose artificial teeth shine white like a child’s smile.
Really, how long since I noticed
the piano standing in the corner of the house,
there are fewer and fewer houses where a piano’s still visible.
I haven’t lifted the lid, I’ve arranged pots of violets on it,
sometimes I throw house keys, glasses, loose change there too.
In the past, my child used to ask me to play and I’d awkwardly
try to get rid of him
but then I’d bang out some children’s songs, as if these fingers had never run
between Chopin and spring gardens, from sound to sound
in the gentlest, suspended minor.
Then he forgot it and so did I, gawky and clumsy
as broken keys.
Sometimes I glance at it, sometimes polish it.
How long is it since I lifted the heavy lid of the old piano,
how long since I looked into my mother’s slightly dry
but the most beautiful, tired eyes.
