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March 01, 2010

Monday Poem

Victor Borge and the Player Piano

We lived on Oak Street when one day
my father came home with a white piano
big and heavy as a horse that had
two large pedals under its keyboard which
if you placed a paper roll titled Lady of Spain
between two spindles behind a sliding door
above the keys like a wood block in a lathe
and pumped with both feet the avatar
of Victor Borge would come to sit and play,
blacks and ivories (some like bad teeth)
succumbing to the ghosts of his hands
as you watched ascending and descending
perforations in the roll's paper
pass over a horizontal row of holes
in the smooth brass bar at eye level
likes flocks of geese coming and going
the pattern of perforations sliding from
top roll to bottom orchestrating the piano's
robot rendition of Lady of Spain
while Borge slap-sticked and cracked-wise
seated right where you sat,
your fingers floating over the keys
performing furious air arpeggios until you
walked your fingers off the high end
and dropped from seat to floor
pretending to be that funny man
with fingers as facile
in the adult manner of a
brilliant Danish clown

by Jim Culleny
Feb 22   2010


Victor Borge at the White House

Posted by Jim Culleny at 12:40 AM | Permalink

Comments

Very nice poem!

Posted by: Sue Hubbard | Mar 1, 2010 3:38:37 PM

Look Ma, no hands, but how 'bout those busy feet!

A masterly poem, Jim. I read it many times: read about Borge, listened to Eddie Fisher crooning Lady of Spain, and thought about the hours you've invested in warm up scales over the years in order to get those fluttering air arpeggios bothering the atmosphere over the keys, and in just the right tempo.

One thinks of horse hair violin bows but now I'll be thinking more about horses and pianistic sounds. And Sue, I beg to differ--nothing "nice" about this poem and three cheers for that. Seething, more like it. A poem from a bard who knows all about adults manning sophisticated clown suits. Them's some baaaad teeth chewing quite the mouthful.

Thanks for the gallop!

Posted by: Frances Madeson | Mar 2, 2010 7:57:07 AM

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