Piano Dreams

Harriet

I have lost and I have found it,
Drowning in the vein of Juliets and pirouettes,
A love emerges without meeting, 
And there to dream is an Ophelia. 

Our symphony is opium to chase a girl throughout a ball. 

The oboe joins the English horn
Carving out adagio. 
We have gone into the countryside. 
Do not seek to find us at the 
Grim estate. 

The timpani should intervene 
And march out a procession. 
He remains the wizened Frenchman 
Smirking at the pizzicato, left alone.

Yet I embrace another Sabbath 
Where the brass infects my ears
I am thrust into a tangent of a maid at the piano. 
Thus returns the leitmotif…

Gretchen

And so what if she should find herself
At the piano, singing out her pain in a 
Soprano. A spinning wheel laments the 
Loss of peaceful kisses, spinning 
Perpetuity. She runs in consternation, 
And in another world a
Man has lost his son. Well, and he can
Leap through all the forests of illusions, 
Yet I must listen to her pitchy screech 
Stocked up with a scene of Goethe 
Borrowing from Marlowe borrowing 
From legend. In her heavy heart she sees no 
Legend, for he is gone and I have found her. 
My darling looks outside the window, 
Contrives to speak of someone’s handshake. 
In this never-ending maudlin I detect a devil’s 
Handiwork. Take another try at the piano, 
The circulation skips. And so her 
Simper beats with imprecision. 
Outside a bleak impasse takes hold, 
And we remember how he died at 
Thirty-one. Meaning has escaped in sempiternal 
Constellation, which we name shadow of 
Tomorrow, where he festers with the balustrade.

Isolde 

Abstain from intervening. The legend has been 
Hammered out a thousand times, yet this 
Impenetrable beast has done it better. 
Insinuating beauty in the chord that never
Fails to carry on, and into the intermission 
We cannot imagine solitude. This is contentious
Passion painted in the shade of lays and canvas. 
And some of us today insist that he’s not worth the listen.

We do not tarry to embrace the artists of our time, 
Yet to intake a piece of art
Impartial to the malice of a temper gone 
Astray is anarchy. Into the intermission we remember 
A society replete with the insistence 
Upon recognition. 

That chord remains invulnerable. 

In a battery of strings and silhouettes she bursts 
Into a dwindling affair. Among the champagne 
Flutes and sullied diamonds, other faces enter deep upon the stage…
The sally of nuptial notes, 
Resuscitation, whispers, fate.