Maro Ajemian was one of the best of Cage’s “prepared piano” players. This poem is taken from Babette Deutsch’s Collected Poems 1919–1962 (Indiana University Press, 1963.)

Piano Recital
(for Maro Ajemian and John Cage)

Her drooping wrist, her arm
Move as a swan should move,
First singing when death dawns
Upon the plumaged flesh.
But here no swan wings thresh,
No river runs. A woman
Strikes hidden strings in love.

Now slow–as fronds of palms–
Her fingers on the keys.
Lifted, her listening arms
Ponder the theme afresh,
until it seems young flesh
Is momentarily transmuted
To echo’s effigy.

No no–the risen hands
Pounce on the keys, destroy
The hush, rush on, command
The blacks, the ivories,
in flight now with the keys
To grief’s unwindowed prison,
To the low gate of joy.

She leans with sparkling looks
Toward the dark wood, her strong
Hands work as gleaners should.
Then, as who would caress
A birdlike wordlessness,
She stoops–to drink the meaning
At the still brink of song.