A poem about yesterday’s birthday composer:
“Rachmaninoff” by Peter Halstead
On top of fluted spines
Between the massing pools
Of dark chromatic linesAnd using blood for fuel
Follow all the signs
And signaturesRead the fine print
On the flapping label
In the search for loveSo the incidentals
Of the dim rule
On the page aboveTake the clouded hint
Or later on you’ll
Tend to bluffIn the no man’s land
Of the intellectual
Handcuffed to chanceAnd lost in jewels:
A dream of hell
With inhuman hands.
Source. Peter Halstead is a poet, pianist, and photographer who with his wife Cathy founded the Tippet Rise Art Center in Montana.
I love the hints of musical terminology in this poem, and I assume the “inhuman hands” of the last line belong to Rachmaninoff himself, who had famously enormous hands, which enabled him to span gigantic chords at the keyboard (and which led him to unapologetically write gigantic chords in his own piano music). When he was on his deathbed, Rachmaninoff is reported to have bid farewell to his hands.