Inside the hall shone glimmering lights
Of red and blue and yellow and white
Then came crazy dancing and hard drinking
As I stood alone wondering, gazing
Then behind me grew a shadow of solitude
And rose a tune of a melancholy etude
I fled away, away from the hall
Toward the door, toward a call
I faintly hear behind the hallway
As I stopped to listen near the archway
I hear the call like the humming of a bird
A sound of strings never before heard
I walked a distance toward the woods
To see the musician; give anything I would
Through giant raindrops and withering gale
I hacked through branches, through uncharted trails
Alas, I see the great musician
Beneath the moonlight, like a great magician
With prodigious skill and nimble hands
Waltzing with a piano in this melancholy land
A grand piano with lost grandeur,
With loosed strings, with lost composure
Stood still upon the broken branches
Once more to sing, once more to dance
Whether the trees are swaying to his rhythm
Or to the rocking of trees the piano's singing
I do not know and need not bother
As I stood breathless to listen and wonder
The full concierto of a broken piano
With birds of violins and crickets of cellos
With the drums of downpour and of thundering base
At last came to a pianissimo, at last to fade
Clouds overshadowed, like curtains closing
At the cue of the final tone that stood out echoing
A singular tone not quite the middle C
Silenced the woods and stopped the trees
Then the musician stood and turned to see
His only audience turning to flee
I fled the same path I had gone
I went to the hall, but the hall was gone
Behind me stood the great pianist
His silhouette unveiling, yet my sight is fading
For the night is over and the dawn has come
In my ear a new anthem, in my heart a new freedom
