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Miscellanea
Poem
The boy as Glenn Gould
Free
  1. Allan D Peterkin
  1. Massey College, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
  1. Correspondence to Allan D Peterkin, Mount Sinai Hospital, 600 University Ave, Room 965, Toronto, Ontario M5G 1X5, Canada; apeterkin{at}mtsinai.on.ca

https://doi.org/10.1136/jmh.2010.005652

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    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.