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On a snug evening I shall watch her fingers, Cleverly ringed, declining to clever pink, Beg glory from the willing keys. Old hungers Will break their coffins, rise to eat and thank. And music, warily, like the golden rose That sometimes after sunset warms the west, Will warm that room, persuasively suffuse That room and me, rejuvenate a past. But suddenly, across my climbing fever Of proud delight - a multiplying cry. A cry of bitter dead men who will never Attend a gentle maker of musical joy. Then my thawed eye will go again to ice. And stone will shove the softness from my face. ~Gwendolyn Brooks, 1917-2000, 'Piano After War'
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