I would play piano for hours
in a Satie reverie. You can’t invent chords
but tiny melodies you can
with the furniture of your fingers and the lifting of your hand.
Old musical structure is very much in place
but in momentary music a taut, familiar, face
changes into someone else’s;
you don’t need the hair hanging down
around the face; the difficult causes a frown,
a wrinkled forehead as you play,
notes dropping, eighth notes stopping as the yellow, dying, day
negotiates night below the blue horizon.
I heard all the arguments of Catholic and Jew,
the questions of morality which found their hurt in you;
I said something, once. But melody argues, too.