A softly lulling piano plays

Sharp, dischordant notes

Muffled by the unsteady grasp of

Wavering hands, shaking subtly, unable to stretch

Beyond a measly span of seven keys

Soft noises drift across the empty living room

Too impure and inharmonious to be called music

Too mournful and soul-wrenching to be anything else

Perhaps there is a melody lost somewhere underneath it

Like the cooing of caged leopard

Or the skin-crawling shrieks of a mother's wail

Falling to shattered knees at the sight

Of a flag-draped casket

It is beauty unknown to the cheerful and loved

To nightingales, unmimickable

To poets, unwriteable

To actors, unplayable

To hearts, unbearable

Make yourself of wax, and melt before it

Be of wood and so aflame

But perhaps it is a pleasure to be alighted

With a match as wondrous as that

My lips drain the sorrowful ambrosia

Drinking with a thirst that can never be quenched

For sweet, delicious sadness

Leaves empty all that it fills