A Lament For These Sad Times

 

A slow lament for these drab times, I'll play,

Alas, they won't improve, can't be restored,

So all the clouded sorrow of the day,

Shall learn I am immune, am quite inured

To misery and loneliness and grey.

For minor keys and portamento slides

Depict the churning of the changing tides,

Of cruel seas and mad affairs of men,

And know tomorrow comes, dawn breaks again.

And there are patterns in the music of the spheres,

Which wise composers borrow,

They sound as truth to those who aren't made bored

By seeking out the sequences of life.

For finding patterns relayed to our ears,

We recognise such phrases, hints as chime,

Resounding loudly down a thousand years

Which hold within the wisdom of their time,

And know when great distrust exists, is rife,

That there is naught to do but bear our sorrow.

And yet we needs must voice it when we feel

That there is more to thinking than we're taught

For melody and harmony reveal

That strange eternal nature of our grief,

And speak of deeper things we understand

And finding we are moved we find relief.

Not in the simple spelling out at length,

Of music's words of comfort, loving strength,

But in the underlying complex thought,

That has the charge of each creative hand.