The Blind Piano Tuner

The blind piano tuner

Sets his tools to work

He chooses the items carefully,

Placing them along the shelves of his infinite mind

And scans the array with his inner diamond eye.

The patches are not to be removed.

He shuffles … … …

Movement runs through his body like

Blue-streaked lightning and white sound

The notes fall off his fingertips

As he touches those strings gently

And starts to tune.

He is not a watchmaker

He cannot set things to work

Create machines and give them life

And tell them to proliferate and betray

Only alter the conditions: select

Organize and discard

His muscles twitching and his mouth

Frozen in the grip of a long-forgotten language

He cannot play the piano.

His feet imitate the movement

Of music along the keys

But the dance is muffled, mute

Nobody can hear anything as he

Shuffles along the endless corridors

Away from the grand piano

In his eternal home.

Where is the music?

Is it playing in the spheres when the spring air

Touches the first buds and kisses

Fly against the mellow colors of the sky?

Is it the icicle high-pitched percussion of permafrost ground?

Somebody must pull

The tripod chair up to the instrument--a noble mammoth

Sunk into an endless sleep--

And get down to it

And play.