The wind in my ear

Lying on my back in the middle

of the rug, aged ten or so,

I see a version of myself.  The shade

on the hanging lamp above my head

is a copper bowl, the bulb within

casts its light on the ceiling.

The underside of the bowl

is shiny, and reflects the room

around me, as in a fish-eye lens.

Two well-used comfy chairs, each

with its own small table and lamp.

Beside me the hard old sofa, more like

a dining chair than something

you could sleep on.  Between the chairs

the fireplace, and behind the sofa

the curtained window.  To one side

the desk, to the other the grand piano.

Sometimes there is someone there who

will play the piano for us, but it has

a double life.  It is also a pianola:

if you thread correctly one of the rolls

of perforated paper from the box,

then lower and treadle the special

set of foot pedals, it will play

by itself, a re-rendering of some

past recital.

But the music that I hear is not from

the piano.  Beside the desk stands

a radiogram, which can play

(as well as records from the stack

of shellac seventy-eights) one of the

newly minted vinyl LPs.

Kathleen Ferrier, Blow the Wind Southerly

or Come you not from Newcastle,

or Peter Pears, with Britten at the piano,

The Bonny Earl o’Moray,

or The Foggy Foggy Dew—

these are the worms in my mind’s ear.