Joy (Second Attempt)

Even in your youth
you never understood
why people seemed
to ignore the dark
of the world around, 
the ugly truth of it.
You couldn’t see
how people could be
happy, or content,
even as you learned
that little difference
exists, of course,
between performance
of peace and some
real thing. But even
now, as you drive
across the length
of the nightlit city,
its quick slurred pulse
unmistakably like joy,
something in you
finds all of it somehow
inexplicable.