The block of flats loomed towerlike. <br />Two sweating athletes, human telpher, <br />Were carrying up narrow stairs, <br />As though a bell onto a belfry, <br /> <br />As to a stony tableland <br />The tables of the law, with caution, <br />A huge and heavy concert-grand, <br />Above the city's restless ocean. <br /> <br />At last it stands on solid ground, <br />While deep below the din and clatter <br />Are damped, as though the town were drowned- <br />Sunk to the bottom of a legend. <br /> <br />The tenant of the topmost flat <br />Looks down on earth over the railings, <br />As if he held it in his hand, <br />Its lawful ruler, never failing. <br /> <br />Back in the drawing room he starts <br />To play-not someone else's music, <br />But his own thought, a new chorale, <br />The stir of leaves, Hosannas booming. <br /> <br />Improvisations sweep and peal, <br />Bring night, flames, fire barrels rolling, <br />Trees under downpour, rumbling wheels, <br />Life of the streets, fate of the lonely… <br /> <br />Thus Chopin would, at night, instead <br />Of the outgrown, naive and artless, <br />Write down on the black fretwork stand <br />His soaring dream, his new departures. <br /> <br />Or, overtaking in their flight <br />The world by many generations, <br />Valkyries shake the city roofs <br />By thunderous reverberations. <br /> <br />Or through the lovers' tragic fate, <br />Amidst infernal crash and thunder, <br />Tchaikovsky harrowed us to tears, <br />And rent the concert hall asunder.<br /><br />Boris Pasternak<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/music-185/
