Symphony No. 9 in D Minor by Beethoven

January 30, 2020


A musick to the ninth degree – an nth sphere somersault

Heels overhead dragoons irregulars en-route to tunes,

Running a rout throughout our raggéd consciousness

A joke woke-capitalism fakes its face to listen

Puts phrases, shouts out praise; gone out not understood;

'Tis order straws disruptiveness with which it Christens

Empresses subject souls claps willy-nilly into freedom

Suchlike par excellence as gracious Saviour's folds

This rifted spilt rebellion from bolt-obvious,

From lyric bars and staves commodious-conformist,

It rips, tears up gift-wrapper music-sheet sweet music

Throws clothes like top hat, tails distinguished in a bin

Here scours a foe-man Roman in his valliance

Issues to force the gate and wall that closes on us

Reposed, untroubled carbon; unaware, unready

Ears yet to flare, where fires set light emblazoned drones

Delight, like pheromones enthuse, flume bodies

One's mind to prospect, to be mined – exposed, exploded,

Cast into outer darkness, taken away to Babylon?

As though... but lo, not so... the music doubles, muscles-up

Its art like Samson topples the house down

Founded on straw: this Big Bad Wolf soliloquises

Wreathed themes consort as half made-up to din conditioned heads

But wrought as just enough; sufficient, free to fall

On desert places, where a ventureless temptation keeps

That opts the obvious, defers on law uproarious

This opal universe rejoices subject to

Here's hue and cry, an echo chases love's Emmanuel

Pursues love's Holy Feet like page and Wenceslas

In metre, music, as like no man ever wrote, or made

Imagined - just as Jesus consternates

This ninth anoints, throws out of joint presuppositions

All premises are raided, all things faded taken down

New wine, new bottles: here invade old-feuds new battles

Incursions everyman can in his way accede to

And some express in excess, as a Blake ecstatic

Wits bitten, dare they hear these lightning armouries, and bear

The surgical steel weaponry's precision bite -

Physician-like?

One come to heal not healthy bodies – that's our need

Collisions and elisions smash down baleful maladies

Complacencies galore strew on this battlefield

As that such arms before now never did he wield

His petulance bends quirky, turns a scherzo-like kerfuffle

Working the prancing kettle drums a rodeo

The pranks of hijinks cut under; clown; commandeer

As if pours scorn, seethes heavenly-formed abilities

Unruly, truly roast with cynic agitations

Contest, but largely blessed, ply catalytic doubts

Confronted, nature's best accounts mean otherwise -....

..this feint to be gainsaid by antecedent altercations?

That spat beforehand raved, no quarter gave to destination

This train of welded thought-music, foremost emotion

Intentions going to, and now only the fashion

Cedes of our getting there

Sofort, there pours jetzt to usurp, a softened langsam music

In two-falls, halfway through, a changeful journey

Although a guaranteed connection, inimical convoys

Convergency interned in variation:

This place lives tender as a kiss from infant lips

A lyric wash of longing conjures sweetly sorrows

In joy, and in alloy with deep, the tenderest, thoughts

A coup de grace slow measure, like a well-bred horse

Whose coat outshines bedazzles human vision's scope

With liquid stride walks easy, moves magnificent

This musick regal visceral follows; is unique.

A blast: the last great movement fazes us – awakes

Who vain in expectation waiting on a day-spent supper

Hears thundered wonder scupper every brought intent

Premeditated, escalated by our hope

This bountiful conclusion scatters seed like weeds' profusions

Seed germs of balm; an holy conversation

The theme proclaims on unity of nations beyond nations

A Burns-night recitative

Romantic heaven-planted seed, with nip and frisson

“Shall brithers be the warl' o'er” our history tells it

Come we again therefore unto Jerusalem bearing this burden

Of Schiller, Beethoven and Burns - in triple harmony

Your Son's blithe commendations live, and thrive, in Holy Writ

Swell up and swim before us; who can barely care to dare

A touch on half so much His mighty resurrection shows

Sent like a bolt, a jolt, down froward straying history

Both backwards, forwards; BC heaving, being retrieved

From penury perdition by Your semaphore bent knees

That to time's-end Your ties to all things likewise frees

Mankind and nature. Heaven’s herein's bestowed

A symphony; a glimpse, a palimpsest

Gloss on Your High Commission “go make everywhere

Disciples of all nations”: here in harmonies

At first hard-baulking harmonies; throes close, resolve

Eventuating like the course of nature, always trending,

And labour towards a nearer eschatology,

These strains are Beethoven's; his ninth of symphonies

Exclaims us nearest neighbours in Love's Heavenly Company