While roaming these rooms
furnished with comfortable silences,
I pause in passage as I hear the sonata.
You must be listening to it once more.

Beethoven crafted it in 1801
from the key of C sharp minor,
called it his Piano Sonata 14,
opus 27, the second of two parts

embraced, like some illicit affair,
more for its beginning than its end.
Softer each time did Beethoven play it
until he lost his immortal beloved,

stranger to all save his saddest songs.
Unable to track the footprints of her voice,
he played everything softer until he found
himself completely unbruised by music.

I am myself deaf to these strains,
growing wordless for I too know
how it is to look upon you
and no longer find the smoothness

of metaphor and melody stirring
from the cliff of my tongue.
You had since traded away a summer
for this song, those Saturdays stolen

by each small separation,
weeks spent trudging
through the arrangement
of argument.

I learned to pursue you, pinioned
by a pining other than lust or longing.
And this song, which he had claimed
for himself is the tune I cannot tame.

Who is to say that I no longer
tremble like these chords
whenever I recognize its laughter
behind the walls that we built?

Gifted with the convenient contagion
of your amnesia, I will let you listen
just this one time. Let Beethoven
and traces of his lyric play on.

Let the moon back in. Let music
and love's other bric-a-brac remain.
We will always need somebody else
to blame.

© Ruel S. de Vera