A Sad Song
Oct 13 2010


A sad song
comes on the radio.
I turn it loud,
let the sound
push the world away.
So space becomes small,
just me, and this plaintive voice.
While the seconds grow long
as if there was all the time in the world
— the metronome paused,
entire lives, unfolding.

The surrender to sadness
the salty warmth of tears
feels good,
almost self-indulgent.
When the world is a comforting blur,
and we all regress
to childhood.
There is self-pity, yes.
But connection, as well,
immersing yourself in a sad song
of hard luck
a life gone wrong
— the hard swallow,
the warm fist
opening slowly inside your chest.
Because we are hard-wired
to feel each other’s pain —
to console, and commiserate,
find strength
in numbers.

We rarely acknowledge our sorrow
in public,
reflexively mouthing “How are you …
Fine …and you?”
Both question, and answer
more handy
than insincere.

But if you’ve been listening to a sad song
you might just slip,
let go your burden
shed a tear.
And there would be stunned silence
an awkward pause;
after which strangers would flee,
acquaintances
carry on, regardless.

And just a few would stop,
take one step closer
give the time you need.
Then join in, a cappella, in a minor key —
the high lonesome sound
of grief.



I like listening to sad songs the most. I think most of us do. (Or at least those of us with a naturally melancholic temperament!) In the first stanza, I try to capture how, as you immerse yourself in a sad song, the world seems to shrink, there is this intimate feeling of enclosure.

Later on, I sneak in a little bit of evolutionary biology (my favourite explanation for anything that has to do with human behaviour!) to explain why feeling sad so effectively lights up the reward centres in our brains. That is, how we’re hard-wired for empathy, and how feelings of empathy can help us survive. Science tends to come across as didactic and dry, so this is not an easy thing to do in poetry! Especially since I found I couldn’t use either “empathy” or “empathic”. Both sounded far too technical. And both verged on transgressing the cardinal rule of poetry: which is to show it, not say it.

Of course no one wants you to actually answer when they ask “how are you”. It is, after all, simply a rhetorical device, a formulaic greeting: a call and response, that contains no actual meaning. But occasionally, it’s awfully tempting. So the poem goes on to wonder what would happen in case you actually did take the question literally, and answered with the truth.

The ending calls back to the opening. Because the saddest songs are bluegrass — those high lonesome harmonies, sung in a minor key.