Hard By Happiness Is Always Pain

Music: BWV 582: Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor.
By Johann Sebastian Bach.
Performed by James Kibbie at Free Music Archive
under a Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

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Hard by happiness is always pain.
A child is born in equal hope and fear,
Perhaps because one grieves what one holds dear,
Perhaps because all longing is in vain.
Yet beauty is what mothers stand to gain,
Music none but parents get to hear,
Of which the organ tone is deep and clear,
The best of being, love, that life sustains.
How might one manage well one's mixed emotions,
Embracing while enduring parenthood,
Retaining the sweet glow of expectation
'Mid chaos that one knows one must control?
So might one have to rearrange one's notions,
De-coupling what one wills from what one would,
Allowing love to launder complications,
Yielding slowly to a separate soul.

Copyright by Nicholas Gordon. Free for personal or non-commercial use.





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