I've been pretty dumb today. I understand what Jonathan wrote about letting your fingers do the talking.

  14

   
  Pitter-patter, Pater-potter... one long reign
  of tears.  Wanda Landowska's fairy fingertips,
  so tender, hardly there (Mozart ellipse
  from oh and ah).  Its name is Pain.

   
  The octave you could barely reach, one time
  in Mendelssohn  –  from H to H across
  the street  –  across Swiss Alps, almost  –
  stretched chords (from dream to dream).

   
  Foot anchored to the mute (hush,
  pianissimo).  Architecture
  of release  –  an iron armature
  drones unison-vibration.  Only touch

   
  the key... Within a nest of windowsills
  light lingers, warm (you hear the bells).

      
                   *

   
  Old Orpheus struggles with his empty crown.
  Glints like a ring of rainfall, twisting down  –

   
  your idiocy, oh India-pendant man,
  oh solitary card, your phantom weed.
  Horizon-benchmark, yoked yet
  to the plumbline  –  your antipodes.

   
  Harsh gongs, harsh bells clang
  hurry on to the end.  She's gone.
  You hear a whisper... listen,
  then.  An interval takes wing  –

   
  snow drifts slanting down the street
  between hers and yours.  Soft sound
  to rest lightly on the humble ground
  goes home compassionate, complete.

          
                                       11.4.02

[from an unpublished poem called India Point. (Singalong with Clint Eastwood & Jimi Hendrix, here.) The line "Its name is Pain" - swiped from a fine poem by Edwin Honig. I edited & published his collected poems.]