Piano Paraphrase

Piano

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.

In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me bakc, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday eventings at home, with winter outside
And hymns int he cozy parlor, the tinkling piano our guide.

So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of Childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past

Paraphrase

A woman gently sings to me
Her voice sends back in time until I see
Myself as a child under a piano
And I see my mother's feet and she smiles while she sings

I am powerless against the entrapment of this song
Which keeps me here long enough to make me want to belong
To this past time in my life of Sunday evenings during the winter
Singing in our parlor and letting the piano be our guide

The selfish singer now shouts loudly
with the black piano. The beauty
Of the childhood that I once had is now realized
And the adult in me yearns for that childhood