Sunday, January 16, 2011

Affliction

Image borrowed from Bing


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."

Lucy Westenra

Posted over on her site Lucy by Lucy
Listed as #103 over on Magpie Tales 48

She wrote:
Beethoven composed the D minor piano sonata, Op.31 No.2 (sometimes referred to as “The Tempest Sonata”) in 1801/02 at the age of 32, the same year that he wrote the Heiligenstadt Testament in which he admits his almost total deafness.

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