Adam Henry Carrière

16 divertimenti on the symphonies of Ludwig van Beethoven

 

(1)

The slow spirit,
at ease in time,
follows in heart -
beat much at ease.

Walking motion:
indigo pace
in cantata
step, careful, forth.

Three ways to live -
fantasy and wit
timpani strings
or minuet.

Stately, with much
life. Like Heep, false
but humble, six notes
vivid larks rising.

 

 

(2)

 

Where Herr Eulenspiegel is seconded to salve the wounds of fate...

Vigour in drabs,
revolution
approaches;
dramma giocoso.

Our Larghetto,
riding the taste
of dawn from sleep,
together; wrought.

Choirs of wind
refuse to bow
before heart-beats
writ by Malzel;

century-half
bar coda, much
the same in force.
Unleashed; ardour.

 

 

(3) Man of a Great Memory

 

A song pain after the holocaust...
                Leonard Bernstein

 

E Flat. E Flat.
Nothing like this:
Dissonance, to
vision 'cross space.

The funeral,
its threnody,
"Enough, as is
needed" to wound.

Yet, in trio
youth in scherzo
live softly, in
memory's bridge.

A remote key,
gesture as chord.
A victory?
Provisional.

 

 

(4) The Gamesome Timpano

 

Walking on air,
ascend toward light;
bright lovely fire
crafted into seas.

Stillness, motion
interplay calm -
'rock and lighthouse'
set the table.

The private home
of the Prince, where
the orchestra
opened this trove

in the Ides night,
drum-led:
Pianissimo,
civilization.

 

 

(5) The Gods Held Their Breath on 22 Dec 1808

 

One two three four;
one two three four.
Can a moment
hold tomorrow

in its chord-like
fingers? Major
here, minor there.
Goethe thought it

a threat; Hector
saw the gaze of
Mesmer. The odd
old man who birth'd

 

it only said:
indeed, better
noise at that.

Well.

 

 

(7) The Untranslatable Dance (in 92 steps)

 

Ripe for the mad-house
                Carl Maria von Weber

The apotheosis of dance
                Richard Wagner

 

Our rhythmic life
simply is. This,
its laurel, echoes:
Worthy madness.

Spiritually
drunk with music
notes casked over time
to create life.

Intoxicant
dimensions, lay
forth across Gods
Presto! a’bless.

Barbaric yawps
of fanfare surge.
Roofs sound 'cross time
and leave whole.

 

 

(6a) Awakening

 

It is more profitable to watch the sun rise.
                Claude Debussy

The dark and wet
part, allowing
passage to light.
Her sobs still flirt

as you call out,
leafless, held high.
Books and clocks bloom
by the window

speeding past all
landscape. Alone,
you swim undone,
in prayer for hands

to join the bract
shimmering full,
up and down arms
grown in country.

 

(6b) By the brook

 

Cadenza writ
by eyes aglow
in separate
weeping brooks; cleft

mythology
preface to their
unashamed fall.
Tongues in bird-song

lament: Cuckoo
gossip, Quail quotes,
Nightingale smile.
Paths of meadows

form a quartet,
where consciousness
chimes across unwary
landscape wrote still.

 

(6c) Merriment

 

Toes and fingers
comb the red grass,
pizzicato
water colour.

Toil forgot, hid
in solitude,
unimportance
exulting, peace.

Bella luna,
soto voce.
Take my whispers
in this acreage

and plant them past
Wordsworth's oboe:
We are emblem,
distant, in cheer.

 

(6d) Sturm

 

The goblins were there. They could return. He had said so bravely.
                E.M. Forester, Howard's End

Fortissimo.
The grim door knock,
iron on elm-girt,
before night falls

to murmuring
for innocence
before judgment
wrought on sharp rock.

The somnolent
call of thunder
pulls cloth from flesh;
storm-light in waltz

time laughs over shame
unhidden, bare.
Bass and cello
drowse the rain's chord.

 

(6e) Hymn

 

More the expression of feeling than painting.
                Ludwig van Beethoven

 

It always ends
as quickly come,
a grey child
amid blooms of sky.

Moderately
we collect nerve
and shaken words
from all the dust

now shepherding
the thankful wind.
Unforsaken
in history's

catcall, we weep
in effort, down
on bended knee,
God head heard.

 

 

(8) Dramatic Comedy, Excused from the Table

 

Our vivace
- e con brio -
entwine in wit
and elegance,

gilded flesh one.
Like a time piece
wound in some throb,
we craft and beat,

plain-spoken. Then,
centuries ago,
the minuet
pulsed a clock-work.

Now, our rondo
and sonata
mix, force majeure,
the end beguine.

 

 

(9a) Meaning

 

May he steal away weeping from this company.
                Schiller, An die Freude

 

The howl of time
fathers the sun
in its tragic
devotional.

Daylight speeds age
from the grunt of
apes to the still
where quill meets pulp.

Catcalls and bray,
philosophe and
spasmodic ire,
these distant worlds

traverse the rays,
casting shadow
upon the lime
dial of cold time.

 

(9b) Imagining

 

Though now coloured
in orange work,
your mind scarcely
can be blamed

for bowing low
to the commands
of this fugue state.
We can forgive

feeling childhood
freeze in small parts,
cleaved by scherzo
into tiny

bits of shining
purple marble.
What is now round
was once only whole.

 

(9c) Feeling

 

There is no rest
in B Flat, no
passage to sky.
Father's spirit

holds you aloft,
transcribed notes of
melancholy
and choral pause.

Variations
blink in seasons;
the country dance
revolves in breasts.

Your moonlight rains
over all mankind,
nakedness free,
lonely exult'd.

 

(9d) Singing

 

Lovely sparks, sounds
reunite fire.
Heaven's charms march
across plains of

jubilation.
More joyful kisses
could not bloom a
rose; to drink joy

is to sense Him,
a gentle wing
a canopy
of stars and spells.

No sonata
blooms such an ode;
we sing, frenzied
upon the wall.

 

 

 

Adam Henry Carrière is an online habitué and former NPR broadcaster. He holds a BA in Film & Video from Columbia College and an MA in Professional Writing from the University of Southern California, neither of which have led to fame, fortune, love or death. He has taught writing at both his alma mater and for the United States Navy across the Pacific. (In fact, his first CO is now Governor of the great state of Idaho.) Born on the South Side of Chicago, Adam currently resides in Las Vegas, where he has won the Nevada Arts Council Fellowship in Poetry. He styles as Verleger / Herausgeber of Danse Macabre, Nevada’s first online literary magazine (which you may be familiar with) and DM du Jour, its daily gazette. He is the author of Miles (2013) Faschingslieder (2014) Shant (2017) and Rhododendrons of the Sea (2018). A new novel, The Hunger Wall, is forthcoming.