Here comes a poem from 1991. I was reminded of it by Sarah Stamford's tweet, apparently following a presenter's slip of the tongue in the last night of the Proms 2013, about Vaughan Williams making a similar posthumous appearance. It was published in Cous-cous 8, August 1995, p. 8.
PLAYED
OUT
I
dreamed it in the autumn: a late work,
Rachmaninov's
symphonic miniature,
written
in nineteen-seventy-five, The Yawn ...
tired
twilit composition, half a minute
of
themes long worn ... it had its premiere
in
nineteen-eighty-six: Rachmaninov
himself
conducted, made a modest speech
faintly
across the air: we heard him hope
they
would not ask for the Symphonic Dances
as
an encore. Laughter, polite applause.
Conducting's
such a task when you're a hundred
and
thirteen years old, dead for forty-three.
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