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."

Friday Writings #91

 Street Scene

The passers-by scarcely spare us a glance -

just a young couple, leaning on each other

hand-in-hand, pausing before shop windows,

choosing - for all they know - our bottom drawers.

They do not feel the pressure from his hand,

his fingers tracing, wordless in my palm,

easily decoded messages,

romancing me - this in the pubic street!

What's there to holding hands that's indiscreet?

Nothing.  But could they hear my churning heart

they'd look the other way, they would, and sigh

and wonder what became of hands they held,

of years that sped away and lovers too.

Well then, I think they should reminded be . . .

I seize his shoulders, turn him to me, cry

'How long since last you kissed me? Come on then!'

Now they'll take notice - me on tip-toes, he,

his hands tucked in my coat, drawing me close,

but whispering 'what on earth's come over you?

People are staring!'  That was the idea.

I murmur, 'wait till I get you home . . .' And now

they nudge each other, 'See those two!  So sweet.'

May I join in your Friday Writings?   My poem was inspired by the 'muscle memory' prompt.  The muscles went AWOL during the writing, but something of the memory remains.   

Mag 198

Ice Field

   Leader raised a hand and all three sno-cats stopped.  The crews peered, squinting into the sun glare.

   "Looks like a tent!"

   About two miles ahead on the level ice horizon, a triangular shape showed, the single interruption to the glassy vastness.

   "A tent? Here? Eighty-seven north? More'n forty below?"

   Leader beckoned the teams forward. The engines revved.  When they had covered half the distance, she called another halt.

  "It's not a tent!  It's a sail. It's a dinghy."

  Three crews looked at each other.  "Come on. Someone's in big trouble."

  They came up to the tiny boat, stopping the sno-cats equidistant around it, staring, not believing. After a moment Leader dismounted her sno-cat, approached the craft, pushed up her goggles.

  "These guys didn't die of cold, hunger, whatever . ."

   The ice-trapped dinghy had a two man crew. One, his hand still on the tiller seemed to be calling out to his mate who was leaning out backwards over the port gunnel to balance the tilting hull. A crew tacking a small boat, perfectly coordinated, dead. Both bodies were rigid, covered in the rime of frost, beards iced, hands set like claws as they went about their tasks.

   "Jesus!  They were, like . . . flash frozen. What on earth . . . ?"

   The sno-cat team, uneasy now, gazed round the flat and featureless ice. The sheet

darkened as the summer sun sank to the horizon, approaching midnight, and a strange wind began moaning from the north, from the Pole.


This Mag post was suggested by the Mag 198 picture - from Tess Kincaid.

   The Ice Cutters, 1911, Natalia Goncharova

Mag 188

Waiting

Do you remember our stone house
at the road's end, at the moor's edge
where gales raved in the sedges
where the clouds' low architraves
lay in leaden sheets, and the land
waited the primroses' return?

Do you recall the promises
we made, making the windows fast,
locking the door, locking in our words,
safe with the cobwebs and dust,
a promise to return to these
old stones, to rub the windows clean,
restock the shelves, lay warming fires?

The day we named has passed.
Rain drifts down from the distant hills.
I make my hands do their small tasks,
try not to wonder where you are

Posted in response to Tess Kincaid's photo prompt for Mag 188.  
The photograph of Haworth Moor, Yorkshire, UK is by Mark Haley, 

Magpie #128

Untitled.

It's said that much depends 

upon a red wheelbarrow

glazed with rain 

beside the white chickens.

Perhaps and perhaps not.

Chickens seek shelter

from the rain and barrows

quickly fill with water.

My own barrow (by Hamelin)

is dark blue. It sits beside the 

red one and and both of them,

the red and blue hold water now

enough to drown the chickens

and perhaps or perhaps not

myself for afters.

Posted for Mag 128, prompted by a photograph by Elena Kalis.

Last May

When we first met the larches showing pink,
hinted at May. We linked our hands. We kissed
over the garden gate. Silly? I know.

Now you are gone, the latch behind you fallen,
the larches might as well sleep under snow.      
The gate hangs lifeless on a broken hinge        
since May, last May, eternities ago.


Posted for G-Man's weekly 55 word request. Plenty more if you follow the link.              

The Willow Manor Mag No.141

Gone

I thought you'd gone. Really, I thought you'd gone.

I never dreamed you'd never not look back,
would even pass my window and not wave.
So music died, heartstrings untuned, gone slack.
I faced my mirror as it were my grave,
the heart stitched to my sleeve come quite undone.

Until the rose, the single blood-red rose,
left on my step, speckled with summer rain
and you, retreating till I called you, dropped
my defences, wept, wept and breathed again,
kissed you until this torn heart's bleeding stopped,
sutured now, comforted and in repose.


For Tess Kincaid's Mag 141 from the Willow Manor.