A new poem about Gould (trans.)

[Arne Klindt <a.klindt@gmx.net>]

Theme on a Variation

Gould is sitting on a stump of a stool
in front of his grand piano, Yamaha, and humming..
The posture of head and hands,
one of a toy cabinet-maker,
moving about chairs in a doll's house,
closing the windows. April,
the icebergs are passing by,
the room becoming severely colder
Above the silvercolored wallpaper-strip
aligned to the horizon
the photo in the pose of an arctic man
at the departure of the journey.
The walls are thin, you can hear
twittering, the rattling of dishes,
telephone-calls,
a train, so long, that they close the barriers in A and B
at the same time.
 (Goldberg-Variations 25, 1981 recording N.Y. April/May 1981)

Not very poetical, but literal to the best of my knowledge...

Phone-calls means not just the act of picking up the phone, but also the 
conversation held (I'm not quite sure of the connotations in english)...

The use of "Arktiker" is unusual: I guess it is meant to denote the arctic 
explorer/researcher as well as the inhabitant of arctic areas (Europeans 
are usually quite surprised that Toronto is situated on the same latitude 
as Florence, we think of Canada as a whole as an arctic country)

Arne (55° N)

(comments / corrections e. a. are expected/ wished for)