The Silent Violin By Jim Gandolf

The Silent Violin

Poem 

By Jim Gandolf 

©️05182026

The Silent Violin

The mountain roared in copper veins,

A father’s hands in soot and mud,

He traded sweat for gilded chains,

And turned the frontier into blood.

He built the towers, bought the state,

A empire loud with iron wheels—

But left a legacy of weight,

And wounds that gold no longer heals.

A girl was watching from the glass,

As vultures circled in the glare.

She saw the bright, wild decades pass,

And found a world too cruel to share.

For love was just a ledger book,

And beauty was a target drawn,

So one by one, the doors she shook,

And drew the heavy curtains on.

Out in the woods, the châteaux stand,

The empty gardens clipped and clean,

Kept perfect by a ghostly hand,

For palaces she’d never seen.

Let others run the frantic race,

She traded gold for walls of gray,

And shrank her world to match the space

Where Saturday’s cartoons would play.

Within the quiet of Room 3B,

The modern world is held at bay,

With white-frocked guards of privacy

To keep the transactional away.

The linoleum reflects the sun,

The dust motes dance in faded air,

And time is beautifully undone,

With only one true shadow there.

For decades held in velvet dark,

The master’s wood sat cold and still,

Bearing the old, authentic mark

Of music shaped by iron will.

No strings were pulled for vanity,

No crowds were brought to clap or stare;

She kept her song a mystery,

A sacred thing for empty air.

Until the nurse’s child walked in,

Unburdened by a father's name,

Who did not care where wealth had been,

Or how the heavy millions came.

With little hands and open eyes,

They played among the plastic dolls,

Unknowing of the quiet sighs

That echoed through the marble halls.

The dusty latch was clicked at last,

The velvet case was opened wide,

And out from a forgotten past,

The silent violin complied.

She placed it in the young child’s hand—

A gift of unbought, unforced grace,

A truth the world can’t understand,

Born softly in a sterile space.

The music breathes, the shadows blend,

The quiet room begins to glow.

For life in motion has no end,

When love is all that’s left to know.

The empty houses guard the ghost,

The copper kings are turned to stone,

But she is where it matters most:

Alive, remembered, and her own.

Jim Gandolf