Harpsichord

PM Brain

How do you pin someone to a page,
how filter through facts, and who you were,
to set him down whole, round, solid,
satisfactory?
Outside, at the foot of the south
high rain beats in from the sea
and I try to set down my father;
choose one thing, one stone, and cut it,
so its oneness is a thousand lights.

He built a harpsichord
in the evenings, after duties,
at moments he was free.
He shaped it, strung it, polished it,
found keys and set them.
The first one wasn’t right.
He built another. This time he was satisfied
or as close as he could be.
It played true, well tempered.
He listened closely, eyes elsewhere,
as my sister sight-read briskly though the sheets.
He didn’t talk much about the ordinary
we oil our lives with.
He stood near, but was always apart.

He gave the first away. The second
stood in his laboratory, with his lithographs
of the Cape, old photos of the mountain, on a cold floor.

Someone broke in and stole it,
along with an antique camera, and a leg of lamb.
Insured, he had to estimate the value,
the hours, the cost, the thing itself.
It exercised his mind. No one sells harpsichords.
No shopkeeper would know or care.
It wasn’t an antique. More a devotion.
How much are they?
Mahogany ply, one hundred and fifty metres of steel string,
keys, second-hand, a lot of stuff no one wanted.
Eighty dollars is what it cost him,
discounting inflation, labour costs,
one thousand hours, and a kind of obeisance to the past.

That’s what he claimed.

Someone must have thought it was a keyboard,
that it was worth something.
It’s probably been burnt for warmth.

16/1/2004

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