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Sostenuto

Horowitz played Traumerei at the White House
this afternoon two twenty-six seven eight
counting memories of his fifty .here
on a platform ambered thick with jonquils
In flute-columned hall a fretful few-yeared
grandson of the President
hair brushed quiet by his father's hand
and as captioned in tomorrow's press
on a bench beneath an oil of JFK
slept to Schumann

Someone once asked Michelangelo, I am told

As I slouch in after-dinner suburb
receive delayed for telecast tonight
today's homecoming in a mansioned wing

Long-veined fingers of my father
younger than I ever knew they were
brush in mine this music
he thought he could not make
but hoped that I would sing

What it was to be a sculptor, or to sculpt

The scales which on that day had filled sonnet
with metronomic exercise
I swore this added to Clementi's
dulling journey ad Parnassus
pounded it in perfect beat
without a pulse
tore it smirking
while my father
brushed his thinning hair aside
and slowly turned and slipped away

And he replied, in some just-ciphered

On my wiltless plastic jonquils
browning in a metal vase
below the rabbit ears
Vladimir moves softly through the laurel path
floats hands into the centered sea

and plays

Above all it is to release

My fingers pierce mid air sudden in the vacant living room
one four and rest three one two three five five
four-four-four three-three-three two-two-two five-five-

Long hands blue lined in memory like this mother's
whose love was never thought nor hoped to him
press softwarm velvet on the backs of mine

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