The Sunday Poem: “The Köln Concert” by Martin Agee

March 22nd, 2025

The Sunday Poem is published weekly, and strives to include the poet reading their work.

Martin Agee reads his poem at its conclusion.

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The cover of Keith Jarrett’s 1975 live recording The Köln Concert [ECM]

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The Köln Concert

I’m listening to the Köln Concert
and it is déjà vu. It’s Keith Jarrett playing
the music I always knew but never listened to.
It is every night at midnight putting away the violin
and sitting alone somewhere on the Kansas prairie
playing the piano. I play and play, and it is a search.
It is like praying and searching.
A search for something to put the tears in. A receptacle
for tears. All of them: my mother’s tears, my father’s tears.
My brother’s tears. All the tears of the world spilling
onto the ivory keys making them slick, slippery,
fingers sliding across the surface of my alone hours
at midnight when no one listens, no one cares,
no faces peer at me through windows
the way they did when I practiced Tchaikovsky
and imitation Paganini caprices, every note tortured
and out of tune. I should have been a painter
or a fisherman in Colorado. I miss the mountains
smiling at me like they used to
in the windswept valley of sagebrush and lone pine,
antelope rushing next to the car window,
the Snowy Range in the windshield clear
as mother of pearl, the cat’s eye shooter
that I still carry in my pocket for luck
and reminding me of those sunny days in the west
where my footprints still mark the dusty roads
and my legs are fenceposts that anchor my weight
deep into the soil of home and lean
into the wind, the wind that dries the sweat
that falls on the keyboard and wide-grained spruce
stained permanent with salt that mixes with tears,
the fingers fast and slick on the ivories, no science,
no lessons, no juries, no jealous lovers,
no mother pointing a finger. It’s midnight now,
no, it’s two a.m. but it doesn’t matter, I’m staying the night
till the concert is ended and there’s nothing left,
no mountains, no fenceposts.

Listen to Martin Agee read his poem

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Martin Agee’s career as a violinist has brought him to the major concert venues, recording studios, and theatres of New York City for four decades. As a writer of poetry, fiction and critical essays, his works have appeared in Belle Ombre, Allegro, Out There Literary Magazine, and Jerry Jazz Musician, among many others.

Listen to Keith Jarrett perform “Part II c” from The Köln Concert [Universal Music Group]