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In the master class, students sit on folding chairs,
in a wide semi-circle, cellos in hand.
Casals pushes up on the rim of his glasses;
his head is a moon nesting
on the horizon of his shoulders:
"Do it this way, play without playing."
Then the old master persuades Mozart's ghost
to fill the air with an eerie resonance
for students to learn -- no, absorb -- how notes,
even the most sublime, can dive into wreckage,
seeking their own shadows.
The student from Boston repeats the phrase,
then stares back in silence, uncomprehending
why her music must become a river,
a canticle of emotions, a paradox of riddles.
- Frank Varela
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