My teacher gave me a piece
by Hindemith
when I was newly a freshman
in her studio
and she told me to study it
and play it.

I took it from her
warily
and dissected the thing
until
I thought I might die
but didn't.

Yet today
as I was weary,
I spent a long time
simply playing intervals
until they were perfect and then
playing them until they were even more perfect
and made myself breathe all of my life into them until it felt utterly natural,

and then I thought that maybe I could
actually stand to have another look at this at this awful, bizarre,
beautiful music of mourning; after all, it doesn't sound so bad these days...

That is when I understood
why my teacher, in her wisdom,
had forced me to undertake this foreign,
fragmented funeral suite in the first place.  For she knew then

what I see now
when I remember
and what I hear
when I practice
and what is like the ecstacy
of laying down a finally completed task--
with a secretive knowing that you'll return to it again by choice one day--
when I perform:

At the outset,
I was not good enough
to play it,
but I was good enough
to learn it.