Morning Music

Five fingers on the piano playing Pleyel,
pale scales falling off my irate eyes
in fiery practice,
turning with a metronome
near the art print of Cezanne,
with no ashen shadow of trembling
to stare at the footnotes of my secret verse,
hiding such compositions from my stage mother,
promoter of my cause for her prodigy,
staring at these wan exercises of perpetual motion
since the tenderest age in afferent power
of a child's wish to please,
even with a caress to these serious pages
that father gave you to play with,
you hold your legacy in the arms
of lengthened fate,
not questioning talent carried on pensive hands,
until my Scriabin of a teacher
with a kind instinct for truth
notices my poetry on the keyboard
asking an adolescent like Pasternak
Which art will you follow?
And I chose without hesitation
the fireworks’ language of musical tongues.