The Story of Beethoven

DANIEL KURIAKOSE

We need not seek in sea-nymphs
or tree-spirits
not in the lassitude of tree-spirits,
nor in a
grass of politics
and arrest,
nor in love, nor in
the city’s famous somnambulant grackles
what appears to be caught
in speech, she said and told me
about a man named Beethoven
who could change the architecture
of a city just
by listening for an afternoon
sitting at a bench by
the bike stands at Prospect Park
on the first day of 2024’s spring
and apartment buildings
overnight Viennese.
Then they went up to him.
Beethoven,
get off our streets, they said
so he plugged his ears, or that’s
what she told me, that all you
need is
to tell a man, go deaf, and he will.