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Dominant Harmony
In that dream I pinched myself
and my father said No! You cannot wake by suffering.
So how will I wake? How will I know I’m alive?
And how will you know me?
My father showed me:
bulky furniture covered with a tarp
he whisked away: a rented Bechstein.
I said: what shall I practice?
The scales, the voicings, the remote minor?
My father said: practice the dream and perform it.
All night I watched my hands trying to escape.
Breathless summer. Pollen hung in the no-breeze,
a dry pang high in the nostrils.
Outside the crickets were building an empire
itchy as the night sky.
The universe was a mumble of prompts:
Maestoso. Accelerando. Apartando.
Venus waited with pursed lips.
And my father listened critically,
legs crossed, two fingers against his cheek,
a tall man determined to take up no space,
his knees up to his chin—at last
a light came to the window. Dawn.
I had played it.
I had coaxed my little finger
to forget Narva, my cherished griefs,
my father fading in his frayed blue robe.
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D. Nurkse's twelfth poetry collection A Country of Strangers: New and Selected Poems was published by Knopf in 2022.
[note: Narva—competition in Estonia dedicated to the works of Polish composer Frederick Chopin.]
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Margaret Isabel Dicksee, The Child Handel Discovered by His Parents, 1893. Oil on canvas. H 91.5 x W 122 cm.