I Keyboard Position

(For HH & JDH)

I went to hear a singer sing his due

Recital and to learn to love his voice,

Yet on the instant knew I had no choice

But watch th’ accompanist and think of you,

For when they came onstage a dream began

As German art-songs sung up from a deep

Chasm of voice that ought to haunt my sleep,

My heart was drawn instead to that tall man

Curled over the piano in that soft,

Sprung posture that in you I used to know,

When you assumed it, meant that you would go

Anon, and play your listeners aloft

To dazzling heights of ecstasy and free-

Fall back with us to depths of bronze despair

Because your fluid playing pulled us there,

And art, remembered now, that let me see

That this man taught those notes to you, each one,

And from his posture, know you were his son.

II Nocturne

(For JDH)

You always play the Evensong or toll

The close of Compline on that rank of keys

That lets the darkness in at night and sees

No morning come again where dawn should roll

Its banner out, because your day is past,

Untimely so, and others left behind

Whose love for you through music was refined,

And evening services to hold us fast

Within your arms; now elders play the songs

As you’d have done if time had let you play

A lifetime–even just another day–

With melody to right the thousand wrongs

That took you from our midst, that stopped the tune,

Left only other hands to tend the notes,

And threw you like a star among the motes

Before you could play in another June.

Now summers come no more, nor daylight’s dawn,

Though through the night your music lingers on.