DEREK SELLEN

 

 

 

 

At first she seems defenceless,

a slave of the piano,

her whole body bowed before it,

the huge stolid Sumerian beast,

its snout in her face, its wing lifted,

holding its space on the stage with its weight,

as bulky and as menacing as a boar.

 

Is she too slender for this fight?

 

All her strength is in her wrists,

the interlocking ball-and-sockets of her bones,

the muscle that ripples in her arm,

the spread of her hand, the skeletal puppetry of her fingers,

as she abases herself before it, straightens, pauses,

crashes the keys into obedience, caresses and pummels,

rocking on her seat, overpowered and overpowering,

running ahead of the music in her mind,

ascending and ascending...

 

It is finished and we are applauding, standing,

while she rises and acknowledges us, a slight woman

beaming shyly, hair damp with sweat,

slipping through the curtains until we clap her back to the piano

and she plays something tender and inconsequential,

a trot of notes that hardly skims the surface of the keys,

as if she says to the piano, now you are mine.