the will of tempered hands

improvising imagination,

a mind’s eye settles

long enough to predict music’s existential future,

watering classical’s ubiquitous stream,

orchestrating passionate movements

time and again…

within his promiseland spirit

heroic romance endured,

no restrained sounds,

none,

no predictable flute lavishness

no voice could reach,

no ear could penetrate,

no ears could perceive…

all pathetic genius

indeed, music was Beethoven’s conscious death,

unconscious joy,

the inevitability of a life profound,

music lilting skyward

from escalating fingers,

searching springtime Vienna fields

whirling romantic motion,

choruses of basses clearing a path

to discern a shepherd’s horn

commencing the Pastoral

and throughout his symphonic world,

 his primal voice

muses resoundingly…

what little life would mean

without the Music

such is he an anomalous triumph,

without clean dress

his threadbare clothes shone golden,

this man gracing poverty,

yet his music

commanding dukes and lords to provide him castles,

this man

who never called a lover by her name

was secretly adored by all of Europe,

this man

who bravely dreamt

yet denied himself time to rest,

to persist and survive

even as death shadowed

then swallowed him tragically

who other than this composer

was so gifted

to love

to testify magnanimously for humankind?

who prevailed so fearlessly to stumble down extraordinary streets?

humble enough to beg for that exact euphony?

masterful enough to devise that exact harmony?

and who other than Beethoven

was deaf enough

to explore then discover

sensibility’s one-way nighttime streets

with only a lead pencil and mirror to guide?

perhaps humanity someday will step unawares

into an unchartered hidden place

deep inside a disembodied dreamworld

and stumble into those first two chords of the Eroica,

those two pillars of pronouncement

forever threatening

forever challenging our ideas of perspective,

forever tuning our ear contrary to

any pursuit

of artistic and intellectual conformity

St. Louis, 1977