The Academi Cardiff International Poetry Competition

Carolyn Jess

Music Lesson

I am seven years old.
The window is filled with my face,
Watching for her return. The rain,
Globed like semibreves, is a page of music.

I know nothing but deafness
At the end of those fists,
A fists’s sforzando
Pummeling the white keys black.

The window is a stave
Ringing all the captive notes’ ransom.
They cling to their bars,
Too afraid to leave.

The conductor is so black and white,
He sees only right and wrong.
I am his wrong.
You are the conductor,

Waving your arms to the rhythm
Of your rage.
I stand here, mute as a page,
Waiting for the cadence

Of a chair in the air
Or another broken door
And the tiny, awe-filled applause
Of rain against the window

Before she comes home
To the Grand Finale.
How well you know this music!
You heard it often as a child

Falling beautifully on the walls’
Decidedly deaf ears.
You grew to love the black and white,
You knew then where you stood

With him, your father.
Every silence must be filled with a concerto,
A tug of war,
And I, your echoing hiatus,

Must be filled with the din
Of your scars
That cry out their unheard melodies
At the ends of your muffled wrists.

The window wells up with tears.
There is a change of key.
You behind me,
Beating time with a belt.

Carolyn Jess from Belfast began writing at the early age of 7 years old with a series of short stories, before producing a collection of poetry, Interesting Tales of the Obvious when she was 12. Since then she has written poems, novels and screenplays. An English and Classical Studies graduate from Queens’ University, from where she also gained an MA in Creative Writing, she is now studying for a PhD in Shakespeare in Film, also at Queens. In 2002 Carolyn hopes to shoot her first feature film, and work on her debut poetry collection, ’Inroads’.