listening to a string quartet

violins in the warm dark tell us that life is good
that petty pains and hurts we can endure
all of us find ourselves some time in dante's wood
and none of us is ever truly pure
yet we attempt each in a different way
that somehow always seems to be the same
to point the moral to the lifetime play
accept some praise accept some of the blame
music that comes to us over the long years
the notes that mozart wrote with tripping grace
brings old vienna directly to our ears
and makes the world entire a simple place
that so much beauty came from such a one
says hope remains alive beneath the sun