Composition Towards the end, his left hand became paralyzed, and during that period he wrote a beautiful piece for the left hand alone. -Mrs. Frederick Converse It sings clearest which is nearest sleep. The halfway child, humming to himself. The old woman, thinned to a piano string, who remembers suddenly the flash of green she saw when she was six, and not again. Of the remaining hands the right dances in the air. The left holds still. This is a piece for the left hand.