Dust and Ivory

The elegy of an old, out of tune piano that no one ever plays any more.

In a dark room at the back of a house
sits an aged and dust-dressed artefact,
shadow cast long in bands of twilight,
voice caged, old and untuned, in wood.

The quiet remembers a century of song;
sonatas and concertos that danced the air,
a chorus soaring behind deep and ringing notes,
and the applause of a thousand onlookers.

Once there were high and lilting waltzes,
the music twirling the dancers like puppets,
and disjointed little preludes with no genre,
written to ideas that were new and did not last;

all the etches of ink on yellow crinkled paper,
swift toccatas and meandering fantasias,
all the sheets that tell their journies pile high
in this cramped hall of discarded things.

The echoes of fugues and études leave the air,
the lid lies shut, the days wander by,
the last trace of a deft and gentle hand lingers
on black and white keys, smooth and cold.

Still there is not silence in that room.
In the pauses between breaths is an echo;
the vestiges of a soft nocturne in E minor,
the last tale that treasure ever told.

Even now the canny listener can hear;
it refuses silence, glitters in sound;
its notes are tiny diamonds scattered
in noise like dust motes in a sunbeam.

Every song fades like light in the dusk,
but none are ever lost or forgone.
While the world turns on, the old songs sleep,
in peace and in quiet, in dust and in ivory.

Reviews

[redd Brick Keshner]

“Every song fades like light in the dusk,” that is such a resounding line, a truth that I would like to make mine. For the world is always ever loud. And all redolent memories are sleeping in the cloud.They may be momentarily forgotten but never are they completely forgone. 🙏🏻🕊