Lovely Thing Suite: Knots

[Verse 1]
What a tangle
What a strangling knot to be caught in
To be exiled here
To be stuck in Berlin with Vienna so near
Yet so far from the Emperor’s ear
What a strange and impossible sum
To be old while to still be so young
To have sung before speaking a word
To be heard
To be hailed
Then to fail
To be done
To love but to be so naive
To trust and to be so deceived
To mourn, forlorn, to be torn from you
Scorned for another who suffers no grief
To curse God, seeking lightning
And to still be ignored
To hide in this room, now too rich to afford
To hear armies of creditors bang at the door
Always yelling for more
And to have nothing to sell that could help
Except for the Steinway that sits in the corner

[Verse 2]
For Arthur it all came too easily
To learn the scales in every key
To play the etudes and the suites
The nocturnes and The Fantaisie
To master the sonatas, minuets, and symphonies
To seek the truth in fits and starts
To strike the middle F like it’s an arrow through the heart
To wing the right hand like a dove (the peaceful flutter of a dove)
And with left a violent shove (some moments will demand a shove)
To needle gently yet relentless with a steady foot upon the pedal
And to clench the iron first inside the velvet glove
To learn to whisper and to scream
(the whisper justifies the scream)
To let each yearning finger breathe
(no, nothing lives unless it breathes)
To burn, to worship, to mislead
To pose a question with a pinky on a key
To flee, to fight, to bleed
To float in air
Nothing solid underneath
To rap those heavy knuckles on the gate to heaven til there’s nothing to
Achieve, but—
To go retrieve the length of cable hidden in the cabinet
To metamorphosize the twisted rope unto an alphabet
To lay the lazy C upon the shabby wooden floor to rest
To send the end across the top to bend the C into an S
To curve the tail beneath the S to turn the tangle to a B
To hug the wretched root around the fibers suffocatingly
To wrap again to wrap again to give the coil seven loops
To penetrate the yawning hoop
To tug the loose appendage through
To yank the knot until it’s ready for the job it’s got to do
To toss the braid above the ceiling beam and to affix the noose
To bid adieu to all of you until there’s nothing left to do but
Climb the chair
To cinch the collar
Find the edge
To step into the air