This chapbook reissues the stunning final section of “Lady of Light.” Lush with sensory detail and memory, The poet listens to DVDs of performances by the renowned classical pianist, Daniel Barenboim, every morning for the autumn season as she prepares for her day. Wakoski trained seriously as a pianist in her early years and the poems respond to his performance with acute observations intertwined with musing about the day to come.

The Waldstein I

When I listen to Beethoven’s sonatas,
especially watching a video
of a pianist performing them,
it’s like the useless act of putting a bandage
over an old scar,
the wound long healed, but healed in
a rather jagged, raised, lurching line.
The precision and exact touch of the virtuoso
seeming so natural, simple, that I
can assume it, as if I were playing —
knowing that in another’s body this extravagant
dream of my youth came true.
Listening this morning to the “Waldstein,” sonata #21,
I hear his passion for the countess, married to
one of Beethoven’s patrons whom the
piece is named for. Beethoven
supposedly fell in love with her, at least the
music sounds as if it could be a
passionate address. I wonder if
Daniel Barenboim is playing it
for his own love, Jacqueline du Pres?
The second movement, so grave,
coming after the first one, which gallops,
rushes, releases, then dives headlong
back into the racing heart. This second movement is like
a funeral song, solemn,
reverent, contemplating the loss, of love perhaps?
Its slow rhythms given up,
and the galloping triplets of the first movement remembered.
Daniel B.’ face so serene as he plays the second movement,
Slow and then dreamy,
the sustaining pedal coming into heavy use,
so that melodies and phrases echo, and are heard as if under water,
the memories of what once was,
for it becomes hasty and heavy
with dire longing, even when it morphs into the third movement,
there becoming urgent and demanding. Daniel B.’s faun’s ear
just appeared to me, as if the music has reinvented him. The inside of the
piano is glowing again. He has lit it from
inside.