To my brother in Art,

And my father in notes,

 

White shines the upper part,

where you knew only deafness, and rote,

 

in your final years:

the old monastery

 

remote.

 

Where surely you sat,

behind a Fall window,

and wrote a Divine work,

to let swim, time’s minnow.

 

On a golden German autumn,

I would say you held close,

What leaves came thither

To let you sigh, and compose.

 

What wounds in which you wrote,

Fearing them to be deadly,

Yet for once in your life,

You found, that miracle inspires medley:

 

A sure death, shall one confine,

with somber reflection, and childlike joy,

on a secret too deeply Divine,

for man’s bitter and constant employ!

 

From the major in C,

You jump quickly to D,

And back C, you go free,

Into reflection’s sea!

 

Now in C, holds ‘till end,

too gorgeous for

my heart to mend,

which shows your true face,

to whoever thought you:

just a sour case.

 

See, what shadows by now haunted

what solitude you bore in violence,

are whose scowls, before society flaunted,

a pain not a one could hear, but in silence.

 

So, would that I were in your time born,

That I might have but brought you a plate of porridge,

If only to watch you throw the plate, shorn, 

of its wretched contents, that I’d forage!

 

So that, in such silence, I could remain

watching what beast wrote this light,

that cool and sans complaint,

I’d behold who knew only a bitter fight!

 

Who heard without hearing,

and wrote, still, what able men can never,

Who loved without loving,

And heard what we:

 

hearing,

daily,

surrender.

 

_________________

 

R.V. Smith: “Ode to the Dying Ludwig van Beethoven, and his Fifteenth String Quartet”, 08-18-24

 

© 2024 by Ryan Vincent Smith