Most Importantly, Philip Glass

It had been a long time since I heard someone play the piano right there in front of me
Xavier was his name
A pianist from Spain

The auditorium was ours
Big and empty, all lit up but cavernous
I asked him to play when I realized I hadn’t heard him play before
When I realized, most likely, that I wouldn’t see him again

He was a musician, a concert pianist
He had married, moved here, and finished his career
Never wrote his own music
He thought, how could he? There is so much beauty already

He sat and said, almost apologetically
That he remembered just a few of pieces
He began, struggling against a sticking D and, at first,
Rusty fingers, but, still, he played for me

I hadn’t slept the night before
and, struggling with translucency
or too much caffeine, I lied on the floor
Below the stage, before a row of seats

I Stared up at the high ceiling
Where this oceanic multitude, the fingered keys, roiled up within me
Where wide convex domes of glass or plastic
Adorned the high ceiling like bug eyes rolled in light

And rang down little halos, wet
and vibrantly reflective unlike my own
dry bug eyes, in a bedding of all that sound

And there my eyes rolled back and I was met with the thought of a girl
who played the piano herself, for me, again
in a tiny tomb, the practice room

And a picture of the fury that stamped with her wrists
And how her shaking fingers looked to hold her arms

How her impatience increased the tempo of the score
And every key was a panicked grope for volume


I remember a peculiar intimacy that came with her back to me,
Performing in a place where there is no thought given to perfection
There in the auditorium it was something close to sleeping
Calm, his music played me like a dream