Somewhere off in the distance plays a broken melody urgent with longing played loudly for the drunken filled with despair in some dark hall, a lone pub, in the basement of a dark building. The outdside world is kept at bay by a tattered old door and a set of tottering cracked and crooked stairs and an overgrown walkway. It is there that grown men gather to weep; where they drown their hearts in cheap ale.

Woudl you still love me there? Or would your figners slip in the dense moist air, separating our hands, eventually our hearts? Would you follow me to the ends of the earth, even into these living underground tombs?

I have heard this song many times through dirty streets and alleys of innumerable cities. I have followed its sorrowful notes through winding ways. I would recognize the tune anywhere. I know it is played everywhere around the world. Ne'er has there been a place that it has not been performed with great solemnity. It is the song of man, a tale of brokenness, of failure, of pain, of suffering. These things cannot be kept hidden, as if in a box in a closet, forever. They are of the nature that demand release, that demand freedong, to find all means of expression.

I know that song all to well: I wrote it; flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood.

(2)

© J. Bernhard

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