Philharmonia is the country where I live,
the same country where Maestro Ludwig also lived
in 1820, when his deafness was “complete.”
My deafness is the sort that comes when I recline
for an afternoon beneath the monumental spruce
of the northern forest, just as it came to me in the womb.
Because all things are music in my genial inmost ear,
and especially all things rendered in our unfailing language,
which is, as we say thankfully, our most abstract
medium, solely of the imagination.  And in despite
of our rabble of tenderfoot wistful yearners let me declare
that the music of the heavens is never so grand or splendid
as the music of the earth.  Just be still and listen.

–from the poem, A Few Dilapidated Arias; Hayden Carruth (2006)