Title: Piano Tune

Author: James Brown

In: Sport 41: 2013

Publication details: Fergus Barrowman, 2014, Wellington

Part of: Sport

Keywords: Verse Literature

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Sport 41: 2013

Piano Tune

page 6

Piano Tune

for Jocelyn Hill

The tuner in his 80s opens up the boards
of our old upright, sits down and plays
his tuning tune—a rollicking swing number,
which bounces foreign round the room,
bending the hairs of his inner ear
toward some perfect template we can’t hear.
‘Well, that’s how it used to be,’ he says.
But these days he goes through each string
with the electronic tuner—‘safer’—
the technology pitched beyond perfection—
‘and none of us,’ he pats the piano,
‘getting any younger.’
The top end is a little flat
and a few hammers need their felt
replacing, but what’s really causing the problem is
—he draws his arm from deep within,
holding high a small dry body—‘this’.
How the sparrow got in is anyone’s guess,
but if you can imagine falling down a well
you can surely appreciate something of its distress,
wedged between the dark vibrations, its plaintive carol
briefly echoing a simple scale, before being transposed
into all the fumbled melodies
our flailing fingers manage to raise.