SHOSTAKOVICH Poem by Sinéad Morrissey

The wind and its instruments were my secret teachers.
In Podolskaya Street I played piano for my mother
- note for note without a music sheet - while the wind
in the draughty flat kept up: tapping its fattened hand
against the glass, moaning though the stove, banging
a door repeatedly out on the landing -
the ghost in the machine of Beethoven's Two Preludes
Through All the Major Keys, that said they lied.

Later I stood in a wheat field and heard the wind make music
from everything it touched. The top notes were the husks:
fractious but nervous, giddy, little-voiced,
while underneath a strong strange melody pulsed
as though the grain was rigging, or a forest.

In all my praise and plainsong I wrote down
the sounds of a man's boots from behind the mountain.