Will He Hear the Orchestra in Heaven?

Gently I wave the visible world away.
—Arthur Symons, “The Absinthe Drinker”

Before Beethoven’s end his last breaths were legato
and slurred: Applaud, my friends, the comedy is over,
taken directly from Italian theatre, though historians
will argue the accuracy of his final words. His loved
ones were more worried about whether or not he was
sober on the day of his death, a week after finding
him face down in carpet gasping into woven wool
twisted tighter than his liver, since how was he to
live for forever? Maybe through the locks of his hair
sold off to amateurs who braided good luck charms
to hang off their keys, the corpse less recognizable
after meeting everyone else’s needs. Alas, the world
continues to kneel and kiss his feet, crown him king,
recognize the man who never used a metronome and
inspired entire orchestras with a wave of the baton,
but more importantly the maestro who composed his
own dirge alive and conducted the funeral procession,
the testament solemnly dreaming of Sonata No. 12
performed fortissimo while his casket crowd-surfed
over ten thousand pallbearers licking their fingers,
and his organs still warm from their final use when
false worshippers start stealing fragments of his skull,
digging up the grave to study his bones, his friends
scheduling night shifts just to protect the tombstone.
They say even now you can feel him in the cemetery
and it’s like being watched, standing at the podium
with bows hovering, waiting for the fall of the arm.

MATTHEW ZHAO

Matthew Zhao is a Ph.D. student at Florida State University and an assistant editor for Southeast Review. He was a finalist in the National Poetry Series and Mississippi Review Prize. His poems have appeared recently in swamp pink, Four Way Review, Indianapolis Review, PRISM international, Good River Review, Pinch, and elsewhere.