The Silent Piano

This pianist has no piano to play except in his heart

And plays without fingers, in silence, alone, tears

In his eyes, pain in his dreams: but hate rips apart

The music he would have played through all the years.

No art can express what evil destroys, no tale

Can be told of unspeakable madness: we must forget

The pleasures of poetry, muffle the sighs, and nail

Shut the world before unspeakable crimes without regret.

If evil prevails it pretends to sing again,

To paint bright pictures of valleys and rivers,

And tickle the fancy as though the weight of pain

Were sluiced away, and sound delighted in verse.

But this pianist avers in his invisible fingers’ flight

That evil only prevails where we distort delight.