Deborah for Years at the Piano

      My hands that were not born completely
   Matched    that struck at a hurt wire upward
           Somewhere on the uncentered plain
Without cause:     my hands that could not befriend
             Themselves, though openly fielded:
                         That never came out

      Intercepting:    that could get nothing back
  Of a diamonded pay-off, the whole long-promised
Harmonic blaze of boredom never coming — 

                                                                          now flock
              In a slow change like limitless gazing:
 From back-handed, disheartening cliff-sound, are now
                     A new, level anvilling of tones,
          Spread crown, an evening sprinkle of height,
                      Perfected wandering.    Here is

                      The whole body cousinly:    are
            Heartenings, charged with invented time,
                     A chord with lawn-broadness,
         Lean clarities.
                                With a fresh, gangling resonance
         Truing handsomely, I draw on left-handed space
For a brave ballast shelving and bracing, and from it,
                                                                                     then, the light
Prowling lift off, the treble’s strewn search and
                                                                                wide-angle glitter.

                           How much of the body was wasted
Before I drew up here!    Who would have thought how much music
    The forearms had in them!    How much of Schumann and Bach
                  In the shoulders, and the draining of the calves!
                                          I sit, as everlasting,
                     In the overleaf and memory- make of tedium,
               The past freely with me    both hands
  Full in the overlook, the dead at their work-bench altars

                     Half-approving
                                               time releasing.