Here in a bed whose frame reverberates
Like a piano as the lightening draws
Blinds down the window, dazzling in its force,
Dying (when every good man meditates
On sin, repenting as life dissipates),
I regret nothing. I uphold the cause
Of my own genius. It makes its own laws,
Defying still all it exasperates.

Roll out your thunders, storm clouds. I am deaf.
How long since I last heard my symphonies?
They burst like lightening from a living death
And filled the world with deathless harmonies.

In one last act of rage, I shake my fist
At all that noise that drowns a soloist.

.

I don’t know how  factual is the historic account of B’s defiant death during a thunderstorm. I do know it makes great drama. He turned himself into metaphor of the human spirit, the restless quest for something better, the frequent surrender to something worse. Rest in peace, Beethoven. The picture hardly seems appropriate but it is all I could find.

Current edit:

26 August (have I been busy today!)