A Piano at Evening

By Thomas Carper

Il etonne lentement.
(He astonishes slowly.)
    Baudelaire, on the paintings of Corot
The music she’s performing, while the sun
Sinks down, comes softly through an open door
Into the evening calm, and has begun
Altering all we thought we’d known before.
The bushes by the porch, a dusty green
Throughout the inattentions of the day,
Now look more deeply colored, with a sheen
That glimmers as we pause to hear her play.
And now the fine proportions of a tree
Are vivid. While arpeggios declare
Her mastery of the difficult, we see
New symmetries, as vistas everywhere
By slow astonishment are rearranged.
We walk on toward a growing darkness, changed.