The Piano Uprising

by Brett Rutherford

A Dream, from the Dark Years of Poland


1

Troops at the border; all weapons are confiscated.
Advisors in place, an abundance of secret
police. The informers are always willing.
The Church, pretending everything, doing nothing,
locked in the stasis of state against god,
the people’s servitude a foregone conclusion.
The men are drafted into the army.
The miners and workers uneasily obey
the order to stay at their critical jobs.
The women wait in endless queues,
their shawls and kerchiefs aligned
like segments of an endless tapeworm
kept at the edge of hunger.
The meager stores can barely feed them.
The cattle and chickens and eggs go East,
get eaten by the well-fed army,
leaving a handful of dwarfish cabbages,
the ubiquitous potato, the accusing spaces
of emptiness on the collective’s shelves.
Women work in the steaming kitchens,
coaxing soup from skeletons,
bread from rye, a bottomless pot
of cabbage ends and sausages. Somehow,
everyone eats.

They put aside an extra helping
for the buxom and blonde granddaughters.
At night, or in slices of stolen afternoons,
youthful and agile-fingered,
girls master the dancing of eighty-eight steps,
play on thousands of legal pianos —
the old Mazurkas, the Waltzes, of Chopin.
No one has thought to outlaw the instruments.

As Nadia practices in Gdansk,
Lidia plays grandmother’s spinet in Krakow.
A school piano in Warsaw
hums by itself in resonance.
No one knows they play to one another,
that the Polish girls have long ago ceased needing
to guide imprinted keys in their etudes.
No one suspects they are secret weapons,
strings drawn taut,
brass frames like crossbows.

Determined and sinister, shining and black
as coffins in a showroom,
they bide their time rehearsing
the Revolutionary Etude for the people,
the Marche Funèbre for the martyrs,
roulades of Paderewski held in reserve.

The police think nothing of the white-haired tuner —
he goes from home to home, adjusts,
re-strings and tempers,
adds unusual parts to the pedals.

An abandoned piano factory springs to life,
new models in crates on the loading docks,
the shipping manifests immaculate.
It seems that everyone is getting a piano.
The Minister of Finance shrugs. The economy
opens an eye and goes back to sleep.

The Minister of Culture smiles:
music without words is a harmless
expression of the people’s art.

2
Nadia practices in Gdansk.
In Krakow her grandmother’s
piano is waiting.
In Warsaw the instrument
she studied on
hides in a cellar
(the piano underground).

Then from a million radios
a great C resounds,
eight octaves thick,
a Resurrexit of brass and wood,
a rhapsody of unity,
harmonics to the nth degree.

Casters unlock, wheel guards
are thrust aside.
Grands roll through empty apartments,
tiptoe impossibly
down curving stairs.

Spinets swerve out
from alleyways.

Baby grands dart
from tree to tree,
play cat and mouse
with the traffic police.

The sergeant leafs through
reports of abandoned furniture,
scratches his head in puzzlement.

It is, of course, the piano rebellion.

The pianos are coming:
wheeled piano tanks
death black, coffin-shaped,
polished and retrofit
with well-tuned armaments.

They all play Chopin in unison —
the Military Polonaise.
Their lids drum open and shut like jaws,
rolling on tractor tires, juggernauts
rumbling bass notes, the r-r-r-rum-ta-tum
of Polonaise audacity.

The battle begins:
Pianos crash from the rooftops.
A phalanx of interlocked pianos
take the field, sound boards locked
in invincible wedges.
Flying pianos buzz over the airport,
their black and white teeth
rat-tat-tat arpeggios,
down with ease the clumsy MIG fighters.

They drive the generals into the sea.
The troops desert,
lock arms and dance
into the countryside.
File clerks toss documents from windows,
topple file cabinets,
pour chicken soup on bureaucrats,
sing r-r-r-rum-ta-tumin in the hallways.
Cornered in public squares
the secret police deny everything,
their crimes, their ranks, their names.

In Warsaw the sweating minister
of secret police and internal security
shouts on his hot wire to Moscow:
“Not royalists, stupid, royali, pianos!
it’s an uprising of legions of pianos.
Tell them — tell them the pianos are coming!”

The connection is broken by a piano wire.
Instruments re-gather in the countryside.
Flying Becksteins invade Soviet airspace,
lead missiles cat-and-mouse
back to the planes that launched them.
(Whoever thought a hammerklavier
could turn right angles at Mach 2?)

The Polonaise goes on.
Others conduct guerrilla war
to the shifting beat of Mazurkas.
Lithe and supple assassins
hunt down the Russian advisors
(those white enamel spinets,
fast on their wheels,
eager to leap from a third floor window
to squash a fleeing foreigner!)

Steinways roll through Warsaw,
Polish flag on their sides,
Bösendorfers to the rescue at Lidice,
Baldwins at the border to reinforce them,
Becksteins fight shoulder-to-shoulder
with lowly domestic models.

Antique pianos in square cases
come apart at the joints but fight;
half dozen harpsichords at the windows,
watch wistfully.
Their quills fly out like arrows.
A tiny virginal bursts its frame
to whip a visiting professor of Marxism,
draws blood with snapping steel wires.

The highway is clogged with black Volgas.
Battalions of Russians fall back in retreat.
And this is but the start of it:

As Anna practices in Leningrad,
Irina plays grandmother’s spinet in Moscow.
A school piano in Odessa
hums by itself in resonance.