Became a farmer of the gentleman sort.
Wanted to examine scientifically the space
between his fields of visual perception:
Concentrated upon the light which spattered
harmlessly on the bridge of his nose;
Remembered the pens he had shattered in between two stones out of spite.
At an age when he should have known better,
he experienced a kind of mid-life crisis,
and like the rest of us would have put aside
all that he had done as somewhat useless and sophomoric.
Now the paper vibrated with an autumnal resignation:
a listless canter across the fields, an un-harvested leaf,
a disconsolate flopping in the breeze.
Swelled air: a yeast of fresh cut hay.
Let us will the world, including these sheets,
to obey our commands. There is no denying.
Even the muse of a Beethoven can lend itself to asceticism.
Spare sounds; soliloquies of silence, space;
a cautious numbering of hours. He smiled grimly.
applied pen to paper; Wrote a Kreutzer Sonata.
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