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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Marion Strobel

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Hands

Marion Strobel

From “Perennials”

HANDS on the keys I saw—only hands;

And yet her whole life passed before me there,

Passed as she played the lilting, joyous waltz.

Hands—hypocrites—that belied the happy notes they struck;

Tapering fingers of nerves, weighted with glittering ware;

Tired hands, where veins throbbed in the hope they might keep still;

Beautiful, yet too white, wavering wearily on,

Playing the song of life when the dirge of death had begun.