| What a tangle
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| What a strangling knot to be caught in
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| To be exiled here
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| To be stuck in Berlin with Vienna so near
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| Yet so far from the Emperor’s ear
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| What a strange and impossible sum
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| To be old while to still be so young
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| To have sung before speaking a word
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| To be heard
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| To be hailed
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| Then to fail
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| To be done
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| To love but to be so naive
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| To trust and to be so deceived
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| To mourn, forlorn, to be torn from you
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| Scorned for another who suffers no grief
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| To curse God, seeking lightning
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| And to still be ignored
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| To hide in this room, now too rich to afford
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| To hear armies of creditors bang at the door
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| Always yelling for more
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| And to have nothing to sell that could help
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| Except for the Steinway that sits in the corner
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| For Arthur it all came too easily
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| To learn the scales in every key
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| To play the etudes and the suites
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| The nocturnes and The Fantaisie
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| To master the sonatas, minuets, and symphonies
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| To seek the truth fits and starts
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| To strike the middle F like it’s an arrow through the heart
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| To wing the right hand like a dove (the peaceful flutter of a dove)
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| And with left a violent shove (some moments will demand a shove)
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| To needle gently yet relentless with a steady foot upon the pedal
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| And to clench the iron first inside the velvet glove
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| To learn to whisper and to scream
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| (the whisper justifies the scream)
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| To let each yearning finger breathe
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| (no, nothing lives unless it breathes)
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| To burn, to worship, to mislead
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| To pose a question with a pinky on a key
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| To flee, to fight, to bleed
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| To float in air
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| Nothing solid underneath
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| To rap those heavy knuckles on the gate to heaven til there’s nothing to
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| Achieve, but—
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| To go retrieve the length of cable hidden in the cabinet
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| To metamorphasize the twisted rope unto an alphabet
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| To lay the lazy C upon the shabby wooden floor to rest
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| To send the end across the top and bend the C into an S
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| To curve the tail beneath the S to turn the tangle to a B
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| To hug the wretched root around the fibers suffocatingly
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| To wrap again to wrap again to give the coil seven loops
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| To penetrate the yawning hoop
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| To tug the loose appendage through
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| To yank the knot until it’s ready for the job it’s got to do
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| To toss the braid above the ceiling beam and to affix the noose
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| To bid adieu to all of you until there’s nothing left to do but
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| Climb the chair
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| To cinch the collar
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| Find the edge
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| To step into the air |