Lightning among piano keys; Beethoven's Appassionatam

Arpeggios spill across the years, As if spring burgeons from its white cocoon, With clustered chords like ripening grain, Numbing the brain in its high tide.

Each note, creating to survive All measured time, And neither Hamlet nor heaven match This handiwork that sweeps the tidal wave

With bursting rain.

Then lifting from depths of dark tonality,

The call is of a quail, Rising in slow reflective mood On quiet winds to brood (As in the Pastorale), on distant calls. Echoes drift among meadows, across fields Sharpening ears to ecstasy -- Then leave -- with quickest runs

Of elfin steps, outwitting The transition into a darkening sun . . .