The Piano Lesson

            after Henri Matisse



 



I.



Hope of the boy’s



hidden hands that they meet



 



at the final triangle’s



point, the key



 



II.



The twice-painted women



are strung silent.



 



The boy sits in air’s



clear fire between



 



wrought music stand,



wrought railing. The scene



 



orients around



the unseen bodiless



 



dancer the women



are bodies of.



 



III.



The wrought railing



strains for the world



of green the world



of time – in this house



 



sheer cliffs, the window’s



slice of green a slice



of time, a sharp absent



point on the burnt piano-top



where the metronome mocks



the candle, taps



its own candlelife out



in unlovely coughs



as the candle lost



in its shining locks



is too much song,



is not hope



 



IV.



The two mothers guard



the depthless walls



of the past he purges



now in song:



 



with the rest



of the brightened dead



they inhabit hope –



 



V.



And now his fierce eye



confounds its shape



in a shadow honing



 



into evening,



narrowing, lengthening



into nothing



 



VI.



Must I misshape time?



To another canyon,



another imagined point?



 



O say the boy’s hands,



strong with gathered gaze,



meet that backwards eye