"BEETHOVEN DOES NOT LIE HERE"  
                                         
                                    Franz Schubert's last words

    Mornings when he wrote, his hand flawless
across the page, the night's chat at Bogner's Cafe
    or the Anchor Tavern yawned like sleep into the wide sky;
Vienna danced and sang; the brass bands in the Prater,

    the organ-grinders, signed themselves in voices.
Like the deaf master whom he loved, he raised
    the dark indefinite body of sound up from its bones,
its triple-flesh, finishing what Goethe and Schiller

    had only begun, turning flat speech, stiff tropes,
and inadequate rhymes into the poems of poems.
    Alpine scores ran through his brain, evenings
of generous accompaniment, and improvised waltzes, too.

    He saw wild flowers dance on a paper field;
carriages crossed the green of his eye; high clouds
    bunched in the heavy skies; the chill November rain
still held his quick flammable ear to the flame.

                                                          –Stephen Bluestone