“Oh friends, not these sounds! Let us instead strike up more pleasing
and more joyful ones!” Ludwig van Beethoven 
 
 
Why did you hide
behind grief these 
many years gone
and shadow abide?
 
O joy if I somehow
am able to put into
words the troubled 
need for telling true.
         
               2.
Grief was my partner 
on pedestals painted 
target of all my desires.
Oh if I knew you waited.
 
Joy, you hid behind hot
grief eclipsed. The sad
affair with that longing 
felt warm, real and alive.
 
Grief’s intimate suffering
is tender love making art.
Grief is the good medicine
sweetness, Elysium’s mark.
  
                     3.
O Joy if ever we only could 
put to tint the lies of grief’s
dun shade on your fair head.
How that sad mourning relief
 
tricked me, made me believe
that all great art could be only
ever done clear justice in grieving.
Fooled me into the falshood of lonely.
           
                     4.
O joy new and sweet, how you stayed
hidden away during the illness I can not say. 
Perhaps it just requires the knowing of the ruse.
Grief he said, makes good medicine and a jealous muse.