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YOU CAN GO PLAY THE PIANO NOW
ni ke yi qu tan gang qin le
you can go play the piano now
i’d say many nights after you spent all afternoon
cooking dinner for the family
clair de lune a quiet,
still heart is needed
to serenade the moon,
to be in the presence of her gentle, radiant light
you always wanted to play the piano
i could so you asked me
all your questions & made me master
even though i’d make fun of you:
your slow hands that spelled out each arpeggio,
your dedication to a nonliving black & white object,
your admiration of ink on sheets of paper
that somehow produced sounds i wonder,
were they always beautiful in your ears?
i know i am a selfish girl
i cried when
you taught me swimming &
skiing & how to read my ancestor’s letters
the months when you stayed underneath the same rooftop
felt stolen from me,
as if i had nothing but an angry childhood
i saw those times as moments of waste & scorned you
what did an old, graying man have in
the land of opportunity
when he couldn’t breathe the clean air without
feeling trapped in his daughter’s house
because to step foot out the door
meant being stared as an outsider?
being a teacher back in china helped, didn’t it?
to deal with foolish youth
but now we are both older, & i think
maybe love did exist even all those years ago
maybe only bitter feelings and ungratefulness blinded me from seeing it
buried in chinese lesson books,
sprinkled on top of food,
handed over in skiing poles,
wrestled in water,
floated through this house,
embellished in melodies that
flowed in between us,
a little bridge connecting two
vastly separated generations.
there is a
clear, soft
french tune i know you’d like,
one you & i
would never play
but could one day listen to
& maybe as we listen to
a pianist unveil the moon’s
most treasured secrets
you’d hear my thoughts
embedded along with every calm chord,
words i’d like to hope were always there
though never spoken out loud
thank you thank you
xie xie
谢谢
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