FÜR ELISE Poem by Gunnar Harding

Not driving nails into the piano is the issue,
not setting fire to the curtains.
It's not a question of freedom from your upbringing
but an upbringing for a freedom that exists
only occasionally. Not to take on
the stiffened expressions in the family portrait above the piano,
the ones that make the notes go sour
when unpracticed fingers search for her,
stumbling across the keyboard.
To sit in a chair that's altogether too big
and read the encyclopedia volume by volume
until the entire known world
trickles into you in alphabetical order
and then to re-create it with an erector set perforated by small holes
through which freedom passes as through a strainer.
To be slowly filled by it
as the flowerbed is filled by the water from the pipe
until it's flooded or a pink geranium finds its way up.