To Play Pianissimo

To Play Pianissimo
Does not mean silence,
the absence of moon in the day sky
for example.

Does not mean barely to speak,
the way a child’s whisper
makes only warm air
on his mother’s right ear.

To play pianissimo
is to carry sweet words
to the old woman in the last dark row
who cannot hear anything else,
and to lay them across her lap like a shawl.

(from Forty-Four Ambitions for the Piano, reprinted in Desire Lines) by Lola Haskins