The boy as Glenn Gould
======================

* Allan D Peterkin

*   Glenn Gould
*   music and poetry
*   biography and poetry
*   musical training
*   creative writing
*   psychiatry

No baseball and no rough-housing.

His Mother said

Your hands are too

Fragile

This meant no friends

(But more practising)

His true companions:

A dog and a parrot

Who sat patiently

As their boy ran scales

(Faster, faster, faster)

That's when the humming started

(It keeps you company)

His Father

Never keen on all this

piano playing

Changed their name from Gold to Gould

(Thought it sounded “less Jewish”, for Upper Canada)

Glenn

Always played on a low chair,

With the legs cut-off

Hands reaching up to the keyboard

Ever the boy

(Sitting shiva for the boy?)

## Footnotes

*   Competing interests None.

*   Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; not externally peer reviewed.