Valery Kourinsky

03.23.1999

TRYING TO TRY BACK

The white keys of those days are begging
to happen pressed by fingers of a maestro,
to be the means that soul of time so needs
so as to sound with its sense
in other weeks and month and years.

I remember dominant-sept-accord
of Cold War
and how was tender Rakhmaninov counterpoint
(wow, the second Concert "d---f-e-d---cis-d-e---d---"!),
creating background to the acutely contemporary...

I am not sure,
but maybe there was once much more reptiles
pretended to be humans,
much more, my friend...
I remember the embers
that lumber my memory now,
I remember, my enemy, all,
which me caused to got bits of music
and I forgot the peculiarities of
stubborn tremolo of soviet balalaika
which so quickly was put in panopticon of history,
where but there are no visitors.

But there is a philosophy of playing piano of our centuries...
The black keys of nights
allow to play only Chinese scale,
only pentatonic melodies of this awareness.
But without them maestro has not enough expressive
potencies and colors and pitches
and, therefore, warmth for future generations.

Not to be damned by them is the goal of the each living one.
Not to be without a sound healthy music in vein is
a secret wish of each actually live time.
Not to be performed by the primitivized imaginations
of minds imprisoned by primness and audio-myopia
is its dream.

I'm again trying to hear the sweet area amongst
crocodiles' roars and snakes' hisses.
I'm trying to widen record of attendances
during performance of this
not-to-all-audible-and-available song of the betters.

I am trying to try all back.