I wake
with the notion
that is is not enough,
or even right,
to let the inertia of being
- the fact that we are -
serve as the reason to be

and I think of a passage
in Stig Dagerman
where he notes
that everyone craves to be loved
for what they're not;
"the stone for its softness,
the albatross for its trudge across the deck"

when through the unexpected logic
of the mind
I find myself in Beethoven's Opus 130,
with or without die Grosse Fuge,
risen out of the deep silence
of deafness,
heard by Beethoven in idealised form,
similar to Plato's Ideas

and I let Quartetto Italiano join me
through the big speakers
at the foot end of my bed,
the quartet
in its manifest, physical shape
tapping my eardrums,
myself left
with the chore of musical recreation;
of making sense

We live uncertainty;
this pain in the chest
may well be the rancid breath
of the Dragon

Grosse Fuge permeates my quarters

Guido Zeccola, one time friend,
long time adversary,
recently succumbed to his illness,
in the wink of an eye turned into a THING
at a morgue,
kept cold and dry
in the extended Swedish detention
queueing for the fire

and just the fact of being
can't justify being

Opus 130 flows
out of the Ideas of 1826 – 27,
with a separate Opus 133 or not,
and the sharp line
between the dead and the living
seems not so sharp
anymore