Piano Roll
They would have seen it
in the first piano rolls. No music
without ‘the space between the notes’.
How the music takes place
in silence, the white paper
unrolling with its morse
of dots, of held dashes. Each
recorded performance unique.
Would have seen how each roll
could be extended out. How
so much art could
still be pattern, as if they looked
unexpectedly at its secret,
its code. Saw, to their own astonishment,
how the contours of its sound
could be mapped, could flatten.