Fortepiano, Venice
Margaret Walther
(Linda Butler, black & white photograph)
bless your name
Bartolomeo Cristofori
who constructed in 1709 a gravicembalo
col piano e forte, the precursor of the
modern grand
by conceiving the mechanism
of the hammer
without you, my mother
might not have played her upright
I might not have sat next to its wooden
side, felt vibrations
bevel through my child body
Bartolomeo--
your name is draped in shadow
is it hidden here
in the night that laps these keys
might it flutter, a tiny moth, in the darkness
below the strings and
numbered hammers