What Once was Grand
by Ross Durand
*notes

What once was grand is merely shadow now
It fades as eyelids fall at three am
Till ne’er a trace remains, you wish somehow
That what was grand somehow would never end

It’s hard to watch while grandeur fades away
Sustaining pain and loss and drags it out
Its right there in your face day after day
Hard to recall what it was all about

Twas Beauty killed the beast who killed her back
A cycle never ending, always true
There’s no escaping from this one way track
The Beast that killed the beauty might be you

What once was grand is fucked beyond belief
And when it’s gone will pain turn to relief?

Twas Beauty killed the beast who killed her back
A cycle never ending, always true
There’s no escaping from this one way track
The Beast that killed the beauty might be you

What once was grand is fucked beyond repair
Don’t turn around again it won’t be there

• The First Fourteen lines comprise a sonnet.
• The last six lines are repeated, with an adjustment to the closing couplet.
• I used the Shakepeareaen rhyme scheme and iambic pentameter.
• I employed the turn concept for the last quatrain both lyrically and musically.
• While I generally try to avoid using the title as the opening lyrics in a song - the long tradition of identifying sonnets by their opening line led me to deliberately choose to use the title in that fashion.