Image: © Creative Commons, license link here
Author: Laure Cepl
Doll locked in a closet, longing alone
for the one who’ll save her.
Dull are the days for the fair maiden of ivory skin,
spinning around, trying to find angles in a full moon shaped room.
High in that tower, deep is her sorrow.
The Lady they call Rapunzel.
Red lips, out of her velvet mouth come sounds of the
rarest beauty. Errant in this waste night and day, I may have lost
my way. Riding astray from the path,
her voice awaked and guided me.
I stared at this fortress. No entrance, damsel in distress.
I called her: “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!”
Mild voice, “Milady” she called me, “climb up to meet me.”
And she let down her long-braided hair.
They were garnished with flowers – violets, violets everywhere.
Once I got up there, I found my Sappho. “Oh, my dear,
give me love!” She cried, “for I have been so lonely.”
“Music”, she breathed, “let’s make music” she whispered in my ear.
Far away they will hear us, our delightful symphony.
On her grand piano, we get lost in the sheets,
I let her play her favorite sonata in F minor,
chords, arpeggios and rubatos – her fingers run free on my keyboard.
Every touch makes all the wires vibrate in me,
a whole note followed by a rest – a sigh.
Solitude shared, four hands duo every night,
for seven months, seven weeks and seven days,
we have learnt to play each other’s melody.
Our metronomes are fully in tune, emotions in crescendo,
I follow the motive, pitch variations, we broke the sordina.
This song still resonates in my heart, after all these years.
Lamentations, alas, you came back. I climbed the
ladder too many times, once I had to fall.
You listened to what they said. How such a delicate ear
could pay attention to the cacophony of their voices?
Remember, it is they who put you in that tower,
cursed, they judged, banished the masterpiece you were.
Since, “sweet flower”, scared of blooming you pushed me down that stage,
cutting our bond with scissors, watching me
sink. In the brambles, blind I still ramble,
playing requiems yearning for a Muse lost long ago.
That is what she taught me about Music. If you take out her heart,
Only art survives.