Piano Solo

She took my hopes away in plastic bags,
not even bothering to wrap them first.
All my ambitions too she packed away
in cardboard boxes, none too carefully.
My pride, she left it out for passers-by
to ponder on the pavement in the rain.
And all my thoughts, each phrase and syllable,
in notebooks, theses, marginalia,
she took, until the house that we had shared
was cleansed of every crumb of sustenance
as though, at Pesach, of all leavened bread.
Only the upright piano stayed behind;
too heavy, with its solid iron frame,
to carry out,and not at concert pitch,
beyond all tuning, sticky in the keys,
its varnish scratched with now-grown children's names.
I play it, and the sound is sharper now
than when soft furnishings would deaden it.
It's clearer than before: the empty rooms
are, to these solo tunes, hospitable.
I play it badly, but I always did;
there never was a time I played it well.
These days I'm learning, not proficiency,
but not to mind if sometimes notes are wrong.
The playing is the purpose, and for that
better to have a broken instrument.
And silence is a better audience,
and solitude is better company,
and emptiness, I find, is all I need:
the dusty stripped-wood floorboards resonant,
sun through uncurtained windows on the keys.