The Notes

The Notes

The hardest test they leave until the end.

But there is no age in these notes of Bach

making their way through two floors to the basement,

unless it be in the feeling way they waver

and pause, testing the extent of silence,

stepping respectfully over blankness

like a walker crossing the first autumn

ice or the ice of a suspected spring.

All of the player’s seventy-nine years,

her husband’s death at ninety-nine and her flight

across continents “to be with others”—

it is all in her submission to and

acceptance of these gaps, the embrace

the old give, since they must, to stopped places.

Otherwise her playing might be taken

for her granddaughter’s, lately practising

the same invention, except the latter’s halts,

being external to her intent, are surly,

faltering forming no part yet of what she knows,

and she rushes to repair them as she should,

leaping the rest no composer asked for

to catch the dropped melody, learning to read.