Friday Writing #93

Lost

You gave me roses, laughter and a ring.

Gold dulls. Fragrances fade. Some day, who knows,

the sorrows you left with me will cease to sting.

This week's prompt from Rosemary  - to write about scents - could go many ways. 

I  went the short way . . .

Imagine -

- going deaf.  Now imagine a composer going deaf at the height of his creative power.  This was Ludwig van Beethoven's fate.  By his early thirties he had lost his hearing completely.  After his death his "Heiligenstadt Testament," in which he describes the onset of his deafness and the social isolation it resulted in, was discovered amongst his papers.

But his affliction didn't stop him!  All his symphonies after the 5th, his 5th. Piano Concerto 'The Emperor", the string quartets, were all composed when he was completely deaf.

I have posted this poem in response to the Poets&Storyellers United suggestion that we write about 'Triumph and Disaster."  Beethoven surely triumphed over both disaster and despair.

The musical references in the poem relate to his piano sonata in D Minor (Op31, No2) to which people who maybe should know better have given the nickname 'The Tempest."  The first page of the score is shown in my left sidebar.

Affliction

"Speak louder, shout, for I am deaf."

They heard the windswept tremolos in awe,

their ebb and flo, as waves crash on the strand,

an undertow to anger, loss, to pain, 

his jagged figures challenging despair.

"Speak louder, shout, for I am. Deaf."

They asked “What does your new sonata mean?”

Can you imagine the withering look this brought?

How he might snort and shake his untidy locks?

“Go to your Shakespeare! Read ‘Tempest’” he scoffed.

"Speak louder, shout, for I. Am. Deaf."

‘Tempest’ The nickname stuck!  At least it’s more

appropriate than “Moonlight”  No moonbeams

light the rage of that finale, never mind

triplets that lap the shore of Lake Lucerne.

Go to “The Tempest”, then. So. Does he mean

his new work is 'rough magic'? Or perhaps

the lilting rondo is Miranda’s dance

at her wedding to noble Ferdinand?

For sure in the wintry gales we hear

a ship grind on the reef, splinter in shards

and sink to the deeps on bass arpeggios

I prefer “Our revels now are ended.”

Here he admits the best of life is over.

From now on all that seems sublime, heroic,

wild, will play out only in his unkempt head,

where still he hears what his ear no longer can,

with courage that proves the artist and the man.

"Speak louder. Shout, for I am DEAF."