Hi Sirrus,
This one almost got lost beneath the debate about art. It took me a while to 
find it again! But I’m glad I did! It's a powerful piece.

I’m thinking the 2nd stanza is the weakest… Somehow it’s all about “the 
music” but it isn’t. It might be that the poem could work OK without it. For 
me the first line of the stanza – The music was nearly crushed – is the only 
one that seems to belong to the poem (and that gets repeated later on a 
couple of times). It might be a stanza that the poet needs to write more 
than a stanza the reader needs to read. It could be that the rest of the 
poem gives us enough complexities We can play with the relationship between 
people and trees and pianos, between landscapes past and present, and 
discover enough of the the moralities emerging from the piece without it… 
Whaddya think?
I’m also thinking that the poem is playing with its own intensity of 
construction. So I’ve also played a little with the part where the lines get 
really long (thinking that the poem “might” be helped if each line worked as 
a powerful unit that said only one thing). Here goes:
“branches thicker than the trunk of the pine,
hands grasping for air above the explosive ground,
fingernails of moist leaves scratching,
digging out from under the oppressive smog,
that stench of human remains, that stench
like the rot (of) gutted fallen trees,
(trees) whose names have been forgotten.”
I’ve added a couple of words which, in my ear, help the rhythm, echo the 
rhythms already established in the lines in previous stanzas.
Bob

>From: Sirrus Poe <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: New Sub: Szpilman Continues to Play in the Woods With his Ivory
>Date: Sun, 28 Mar 2004 03:00:54 -0600
>
Szpilman Continues to Play in the Woods With his Ivory


I am not a Jew
old enough to remember Poland, or Warsaw,
just another youngster who knows nothing
about what really happened during those days.

The music was nearly crushed,
shot -- pointblank, left to limp a few steps
then falter to knees, finally fetal in less breath
than what could sustain ivory temptations
because silence gave life, invisibility.

The front, a community of trees --
a limbless pine shooting straight up,
roots the length of train tracks pounded into place,
stretched across the barren smoke congested fields,
knows its ugliness, but also its strength,
and cannot grow beside the foliage of the oak--
branches thicker than the trunk of the pine, hands
grasping for air above the explosive ground, fingernails
of moist leaves scratching, digging out from under the oppressive
smog, that stench of human remains, that stench
like the rot gutted fallen trees whose names have been forgotten.

The music was nearly crushed,
diseases about to serve a broken limb
and take their place inside the bark of torn leather
given by the pine in appreciation of the fingertips
that could still play through the endless silence
of the darkening forest floor, or given for forgiveness
of mulched trees and sap turned to white paper
which signed, signaled deprivation of nutrients, of water.

I am not a Jew
old enough to remember Poland, or Warsaw,
just another youngster who knows nothing,
except that ivory and wood eventually broke the silence
about what really happened during those days
when the music was nearly crushed.

Now trees care less for where the music comes
and more that it survived and continues to play.


Sirrus

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