the movement would be black
the beginning like a dagger or a jolt of electricity as it goes through the body
hitting with bleeding force

in the far away gauche of the staff (encircled by medieval clef and vined signature of time)
there lie the flats
tiny shards of spite (four of them), tiny storm diamonds
stabbing at the notes in their cage of lines

painful tides of melody descend in inward silence
(all of this filling Beethoven's head as he
walks the midnight streets
heart as black as the sky)

one can see, by the light of a single candle
the shivering hands covered in ink
and perhaps blood
stuttering mad hands
sketching flurries of notes
(curled as if eaten by flame)

the voices (four) weave in constand harmony
spurring one another on, four hearts winding lonely
the lost corridors of Beethoven's heart

throughout the movement there are whispers of the end
(death prancing divine on blackened green)
the throes of passion falls
(like falls of dark Kreutzer hair
a gypsie-violinist's black eyes
the medieval loam of centuries of screaming
while mushrooms broke the dewy shade in silence
and ivy slept--
Beethoven's carriage merely a
momentary disturbance of the misty German forest)

(Germany: the black of the trees and
winding whorls of land seem
the dregs of the Romantic era itself)

there are whispers of the end throughout the entire movement
while whispering death, breathless and shocked
like the silence that comes after lightening strikes
reigns, while mists rise over the graves
while the breaths of the living
fly in plumes into the black frozen air of predawn

The end is come, like a pulse from far beneath
growing as if out of the depths of Melville's ocean
growing, crescendo, all four voices in glorious unison
rising, the waters part violently
a moment of sound where time stands still
and the world is paralyzed in lightening