Votre âme est un paysage choisi / Que vont charmant masques et bergamasques / Jouant du luth et dansant et quasi / Tristes sous leurs déguisements fantasques.
—Paul Verlaine, “Claire de Lune”
I hate the way my fingers stumble
through the prelude—in my ear,
it is beautiful, the phrases open
and flowing, and I hum sincerely, as if
with song I could make my hands
more nimble. There are fields,
golden, inside the arpeggios,
and they part as if the wind has blown
a place for a path, and then
a thousand thousand birds
take flight just before night—
or at least that is what I
want to hear. But I am clumsy,
an oxen trampling in the field
who trips in every irrigation ditch.
I have read that by the time
the suite was published, Debussy
hated the sound of it, deplored
his earlier style. I try to imagine him
here in the living room, his thin moustache,
his thick black bangs, oh how
he would cringe, revile my lack
of sensitivity. And how I would hate
to disappoint him. Both of us
miserable, both of us abhorring
what we hear—I would stop playing,
I would, and walk over to him
as he scoffed, and I would say,
Look, look Claude,
how the moon is full, so large there
on the horizon. And we’d step
out onto the porch.
There would be no birds,
no wind to part the field,
and he would slip his hand
toward the moon, and say,
There, there, that is what I was trying to say.
And I would let my empty hands
play.