The Accompanist

Don't play too much, don't play

too loud, don't play the melody.

You have to anticipate her

and to subdue yourself.

She used to give me her smoky

eye when I got boisterous,

so I learned to play on tip-

toe and to play the better half

of what I might. I don't like

to complain, though I notice

that I get around to it somehow.

We made a living and good music,

both, night after night, the blue

curlicues of smoke rubbing their

staling and wispy backs

against the ceilings, the flat

drinks and scarce taxis, the jazz life

we bitch about the way Army pals

complain about the food and then

re-up. Some people like to say

with smut in their voices how playing

the way we did at our best is partly

sexual. OK, I could tell them

a tale or two, and I've heard

the records Lester cut with Lady Day

and all that rap, and it's partly

sexual but it's mostly practice

and music. As for partly sexual,

I'll take wholly sexual any day,

but that's a duet and we're talking

accompaniment. Remember "Reckless

Blues"? Bessie Smith sings out "Daddy"

and Louis Armstrong plays back "Daddy"

as clear through his horn as if he'd

spoken it. But it's her daddy and her

story. When you play it you become

your part in it, one of her beautiful

troubles, and then, however much music

can do this, part of her consolation,

the way pain and joy eat off each other's

plates, but mostly you play to drunks,

to the night, to the way you judge

and pardon yourself, to all that goes

not unsung, but unrecorded.

--William Matthews