Archive 10/13/11 - (2)

 

   

Piano

                                                                  

 

It all began with the 1940 Mason & Hamlin "Symetrigrand" piano

My mother's father, Louis David Malter, and his wife, Dorothy,

Gave to their twenty-two-year-old daughter, Charlotte,

On the occasion of her April 1938 wedding, to my father, Saul —

A baby grand whose delivery coincided with my birth . . .

 

Began even before I ventured into walking,

At 7564 York Drive (a four-family dwelling in Clayton's Moorlands,

To which my parents proudly moved

After vacating their rented rooms at the Congress Hotel),

Those sounds, that crooning, soothing my infancy . . .

 

Began with that compact three-legged walnut instrument,

Which first caught my attention when I was five or six,

After our parents relocated us — my kid sister, Babs, and me —

To the stone-and-slat-roofed Tudor duplex at 811 Glenridge,

Where I became king of the neighborhood's alleys and haunts . . .

 

Began about the same time we got our first television set:

A 1948 twenty-inch projection model with radio and phonograph,

In an RCA-Victor Berkshire breakfront made by Baker,

Which my mother had placed in a conspicuous space on the wall

Just opposite the front door — our window onto the world . . .

 

Began with my indescribable desire to sit on the piano bench,

Beside my talented, enthusiastic mom,

Whenever she'd ask me to accompany her,

Harmonize as she'd peck away at the genuine-ivory keys,

Both of us singing the lyrics to favorite tunes she'd play,

 

From scores stored in that welcoming bench,

That sacred, secret hiding place —

The newest tunes of the day as well as movie and Broadway numbers  

Dating from 1938 ("I'll Be Seeing You"),

When she commenced collecting sheet music, in St. Louis,

 

All the way up to the latest '47, '48, '49, and '50 songs

("Ballerina," "On a Slow Boat to China,"

"My Darling, My Darling," "Far Away Places,"

"Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer," "Music! Music! Music!"),

Always interspersing the magic of Victor Herbert

 

As well as those special sentimental World War II masterpieces,

Including "When the Lights Go On Again," from 1942,

'43's major Russ Morgan hit, "So Tired,"

And that haunting, exquisitely metaphorical song "Laura,"

From the year America claimed victory over Japan and Germany . . .

 

Began in those postwar years and lasted through fourth grade

At Glenridge School, catty-corner from our house,

When my mother arranged for me to take piano lessons

From tall, skinny, meek, persistent, patient Mr. Robinson

(Who just couldn't get me to make my two hands work together)

 

And then allowed me to quit, with my dignity intact,

So that during the summer after my tenth birthday,

I might be able to cope with three traumatic life-changes

She feared could disorient her little boy:

Our move from middle-class Clayton to affluent Ladue,

 

Coinciding with my first eight-week summer-camp season,

In the northern remoteness of Lake Nebagamon, Wisconsin,

Then, on returning to our new house — a mansion —

The hourlong, bully-burdened bus ride to a private boys' school

Dominated by blue-blooded WASPs . . .

 

Began with that 1940 Mason & Hamlin walnut baby grand,

Poised in the spacious living room boasting a fireplace

And windows facing out, on the enormous semicircle of front yard

Bordering Litzsinger Road — the city's address of economic success —

That piano by then painted in green, to blend with the walls,

 

On whose bench, though not nearly as frequently,

I'd sit down to sing, with my mother, those same old songs,

Along with a few new ones, from 1952 and '53 —

That Jo Stafford classic "You Belong to Me"

And "The Song from Moulin Rouge (Where Is Your Heart)."

 

But by the time I was twelve,

I'd begun, naturally, I suppose, to grow away from my mom,

Follow my athletic and intellectual sensibilities,

Rejecting that pastime I'd once so enjoyed,

Forcing my boyhood to engage in more "manly" pursuits,

 

Never dreaming, imagining, conceiving that, one day,

In 1963, the year I graduated from Yale University,

I'd compose two wholly unbidden poems hidden in my heart,

Discover, to my amazed, exhilarated incredulity,

That I had a passion for creativity raging in my soul,

 

A volcanic passion that would explode so full-blown,

I'd not be able to control its spewing, its molten flows,

A passion that eventually would take total control over me,

Cause me, forever, to hear the world in rhyming vowel-chimes,

See my life as one continuously unscrolling poem,

 

Realize that my free verse, my artistic urge, emanated from her,

That my poetry was a natural extension of her singing those songs

Which floated softly through the houses of my childhood,

Always calling me back to her side, at that same piano,

Infusing my spirit with music I'd never stop shaping from sublimity,

 

Just as today, after saying good-bye to my mother,

I'm back in her empty house, an hour before her visitation,

Lifting the piano-bench lid, after nearly sixty years,

Wondering what I might find inside,

Whether any of the "poetry" she breathed into me has survived.

 

And to my yearning surprise, reflective delight,

My hands resurrect, from the dust, a trove of her sheet music,

All those favorites she played and sang with me, for me,

Those verses, bridges, choruses my poems —

Rhymes and lines and stanzas sung in the key of my mother.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

10/13/11 - (2)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
       

 

 

 
   
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