Context: Although not explic­itly stated, this bitter­sweet-toned poem is writ­ten from the perspec­tive of Orpheus, a tragic char­ac­ter from Greek mythol­ogy, mourn­ing the loss of his love, Eury­dice. There is also a hidden message in the story, which can be revealed by compil­ing the first letter of each line into a sentence, and the context of it will be revealed at the end.

Gods, if only you knew what loss felt like,

Endless woe that I have to suffer,

Rivers of the dead, so close yet so far,

A cry from Hell, yet I cannot answer,

Loss is so much for me to take that,

Death would be a blessing…

Find­ing myself with­out her is hard enough,

O Reaper, I beg of thou, release me!

Release me from my bond to life, for

Death is my only blessing…

If I could take it all back, I would,

So broken am I with­out you…

Alas, now I must wander until that day comes

Living, I should for her sake

I see now, both light and dark­ness in it,

Victory and vanquish­ing on the battle­fields of life,

Endless, this cycle is…

NOTE: The hidden message, which states “GERALD FORD IS ALIVE”, is a refer­ence to an error that I spot­ted in the theater at the Wash­ing­ton Freema­son Temple in Alexan­dria, in which the plaque of Pres­i­dent Gerald Ford, a Freema­son, does not have a death date, simply read­ing “Gerald Ford: 1914-”. Gerald Ford died on Decem­ber 26^th, 2006… or did he? On a more seri­ous note, this poem was orig­i­nally writ­ten as a joke for my parents, but they were so impressed by the diction and writ­ing of the poem that they encour­aged me to submit it to the Lit Mag.