Scott Allen Davis For Christmas

have you ever seen a dry rain?
neither have i
notice how things are darker when they're wet
what kind of humor is this?
shake my hand and say goodbye
look me in the eyes
your hands are shaking
what's that all about?
she said, "i'll call you later"
and then she never did
my sleeping bag is missing
my telephone is overflowing with emptiness
and hey - ! i've got a cigarette in my hand
and cash in my pocket

the asphalt is glistening
there is no color to the sky
the air looks like what comes out
of my mouth when i exhale
purple and gold and blue pass by
and then something small
that is red
black things go round and round
brown things stop dead in their tracks

the pigeons in the alleys
don't even notice me
they move aside as an afterthought
every here and there
is something bright and shiny
that'll be thirty-seven cents, please
and thanks

this is what nature is doing right now
how much of that can you fit
into your bag
just enough?
okay, we'll see
you think this is some kind of joke?
very funny
yeah, it's disposable

every time you hang up on me
we stop talking
see how that works?
do you?
it moves forward while it's not
moving at all
the molecules now in my brain
they have something to say about all this
and they just can't find the
word for it
steam rises and tears fall
nothing rhymes with this
so there you are
see how nicely that fits?
black things shiny things going round and round
a man dressed in brown standing under a
cypress tree to avoid the rain
it goes just like that

when the water bounces off the pavement
it's almost like it wants to
return to the sky
it has a wet voice
and you should hear the things it whispers

it carries walt whitman in its backpack
it has a fucking headache and its
legs are tired
it has sympathy for the birds that are
cold and wet
it talks to itself and you can't hear
what is being said
because these are secret words

yesterday i got scott allen davis for christmas
he was hiding out in an alley and he
didn't want anyone to look at him
eyes averted silent sweat and loneliness
he grunted once or twice
something about
summertime
hush little baby - don't you cry

you think what comes out when i exhale is something
you should see what i inhale
it's tasty and it's life
full and rich
exhaust fumes and farts
deadly trails holes broken pieces
rainbows seen through squinty eyed
shadows

Homeless Memorial

Yesterday I attended the Primavera Foundation Homeless Memorial held at Evergreen Cemetery in Tucson. There were several speakers, some sad guitar music sung in Spanish, and then Taps was played by a lone trumpeteer out among the little grave markers. There's a little corner at the northwest part of the cemetery that has been reserved for the homeless for many years. Now that section is full and so they just cremate people and place their ashes in little lockers without names.

Between 11-07 and 10-08, there were 45 homeless who died without name or family, 30 homeless who died with names and family, 53 homeless who died with names only and no family, and 183 people died crossing the border.

I wanted to think of this as a funeral for my father that I never got to attend. Let's just say it was powerful and good for me.

The following poem was read and I liked it very much, so here it is:

What The Living Do
by Marie Howe

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there.
And the Drano won’t work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven’t called. This is the everyday we spoke of.
It’s winter again: the sky’s a deep headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through

the open living room windows because the heat’s on too high in here, and I can’t turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking,

I’ve been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.

What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss – we want more and more and then more of it.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I’m gripped by a cherishing so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I’m speechless:
I am living, I remember you.

Strobe Shadow

"I'm gonna roll, man. God bless you. Goodbye, man."

Things she said to me
A death howl cry
the moon has gone down
No more wandering in the desert
It's too dark and footsteps
just land where they do
a spiny aggressive cactus with nice legs
I will mourn what could have been
Fuck God because of the Power of Her Forgetting.

She said something about hiding in a coffin of flowers
when the love of her life came looking for her
She undefines aberration
Goes where she wants
Loses everything

Things she said to me
Talking to my cock - she said what a good thing
and then, face twisting expression changing
her eyes got mean as they dragged
from my crotch - up my chest and lingered on my
man-nipples then slowly measured
the blood flow through the veins on my neck.
She looked on and loved my whiskers
loved the feel of them on her face now and
the remembrance of them in her pussy.
Then her eyes landed on mine
forceful and brilliant and sudden
her concentric rings of brown and dark-brown
ringed one after another on the spikes
of the brown, hazel-star explosions
of my eyes
and then she clutched.
The fear in her eyes was ancient.
And she said - "Now that's a bad man."
Looked in my eyes briefly then closed hers.

So many times in so many people I have seen it
A soul that has almost moved but won't
The fear, the fear.
And the man holding this pen and moving it
he's afraid, yes.
Where do you go from here?
When love has not existed then suddenly does?
All you really can do is try to remember
what was beautiful
what is
keep that foggy halo around rainbow memories
touch that golden sun every morning
dip your fingers into the new flavors
use that wider vision.

I've watched a rainbow give away it's secrets
I've heard the sun whisper things as it's thinking about rising
I've prayed to the moon while she was praying to me
I've spit up on my own shoes.

What is that thing there in your hands?
What are you going to do with it?
Where the fuck did you get that thing?
Holy Shit! - that might be worth something.

A certain amount of syllable
and the words that sound just right
abstract thoughts keep/kept tumbling down
not a damn bit of this
makes any fucking sense
but there it is it is what it is

I only have five arms to juggle with at this stage
in my growing
she was just too much
maybe after we've devolved a few times
back to something true
the Tao never is when it's defined

Mystery
the who you are
i want to and will
never know

Invidious
defending a lone truth
against an
irrational power

Beauty
meant to be
never allowed
secret silent - is

Lavender with a
deadly bright yellow
an alluring scent
two or three words between

The closer I get to a moving train
the more turbulence there is
my mind begins to spin
and then I am flash-hypnotized

I get to watch the show through the window
right before my eyes, Igor accidentally kills himself
and I'm not sure whether that was terror or
a great big smile when he died.

There's a place on this side of that side
where I live and it's quite real
bugs drop out of trees and gum sticks to your shoes
you get emails worth fortunes and
hey-how-ya-doin's from people
you don't know.
Some people have thoughts and
most of them don't.
Everyone feels something.
You can sit under a tree
on a piece of concrete or a log
watch the thunder and look for a place to light a candle
fabricate some temporary protection
put up a concerted effort at really caring.
Wait! - this is all about you - no, it's about me - no, it's
about us - or you - or me - or you
me didn't read you mind
you didn't read me mind
so we're both wrong --
and it would only be the right thing to try
so of course we won't
it would only be the right thing
and we're all smart and shit.

There was a young man from Nantucket
whose brain fit nice in a bucket
He listened and learned
worried and yearned

O happy day
My sweet Lord
O happy fucking day
My sweet fucking Lord
O fucking A!
Sweet Fuck Yeah!

Tell yourself invidious stories
of my odious nature
I will mourn the power
of your forgetting
If that sounds familiar I'm sure
it's because you've heard it before.

One drop at a time - this rain
falling almost secret
Surprise! - there's another one
didn't expect that now,
didja?

I gotta ask....
if you're so innocent,
why you got at least two pair of
crotchless hose and all them
devastating panties?
Why you keep that shaved?
Why it embarrasses you?

Mud formed
and solidified
temporary

yellow and black
caution!
she hides and
makes-believe
and you
are
culpable

She has flowers
she found in an
encyclopedia or a dictionary
and then she has flowers
she's been carrying around
every day of her life.
you can smell them on her
and if she wants to
she'll give you one.

the difference
between rain and tears -
a heartbeat

one foot moving forward
off-balance, alone
falls

shadow moving
in which direction?
that way!

dinosaurs in the distance
with no sound
and yeah, they're real

every word you say
infallible, immortal -
what?

Too much salt
and too much sugar
and not enough pepper, lemon,
or dirt.

Strobe shadow of passing train cars
rumbling distant rhythm
she reads me poems and sings a gentle memory
she leans her head on and holds me
she whispers her wisdom so quiet I can't hear
then sudden leaps and bites and tugs and pulls
accusations and fears and the full spectrum of anti-beauty
the easiest route is to wait
let her flood abate
give her time to distract herself
then she will again hold me and
for a brief time again
there will be love

It is the highest quality of love
captured in little bubble perfect moments
like I am swimming in a long river of shit
and when I lift my head to breathe
I inhale nectar.

- Igor Sapien, December 17, 2008

Too Much Else To Do Besides Suffer

Last night I dreamt that a hummingbird twice landed on my outstretched hand. She sat and looked at me and I was afraid. I held up my other hand to protect my eyes. Then she landed on my shoulder and nuzzled up against my neck and I was afraid she would drill through my skin and I awoke clutching at my neck. Why was I afraid?

"She started Jitterbugging with me - but just very nice and easy, not corny. She was really good. All you had to do was touch her. And when she turned around, her pretty little butt twitched so nice and all. She knocked me out. I mean it. I was half in love with her by the time we sat down. That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can."
- J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

"But while I was sitting down, I saw something that drove me crazy. Somebody'd written 'Fuck you' on the wall. It drove me damn near crazy .... I kept wanting to kill whoever'd written it. I figured it was some perverty bum that'd sneaked in the school late at night to take a leak or something and then wrote it on the wall. I kept picturing myself catching him at it, and how I'd smash his head on the stone steps till he was good and goddam dead and bloody .... I went down by a different staircase, and I saw another 'Fuck you' on the wall. I tried to rub it off with my hand again, but this one was scratched on, with a knife or something. It wouldn't come off. It's hopeless, anyway. If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the 'Fuck you' signs in the world. It's impossible .... It was so nice and peaceful. then, all of a sudden, you'd never guess what I saw on the wall. Another 'Fuck you.' It was written with a red crayon or something .... That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write 'Fuck you' right under your nose. Try it sometime. I think, even, if I ever die, and they stick me in a cemetery, and I have a tombstone and all, it'll say "Holden Caulfield" on it, and then what year I was born and what year I died, and then right under that it'll say 'Fuck you.' I'm positive, in fact."
- J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

"Danny's a night wanderer now, an early-morning man, a lonely, dragging thing. When he asks you for a quarter for a skull-buster his eyes beg you to forgive him because he can't forgive himself."
- John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

Today's word: aberration
noun. a deviating from the right path or usual course of action; a mental disorder, especially of a minor or temporary nature.

1. He realized that her unquestioning trust was but an aberration.
2. His boisterous behavior was an aberration brought on by the whiskey.
3. Her love was a welcome aberration to his life.
4. As an aberration, he decided to look for a job.

"You're letting yourself get too unnecessarily tangled up in sad fate. Let's figure a way to clean things up before it gets further, makes writing paranoid and life lousy. It's strictly situation, external, not absolute and fixed fate for you unless you leave it be fixed fate. Am not being analytic-moral. None of us are fast and strong enough to battle society forever really, it's too sad and grey. Just felt you were feeling too crazy lately and am putting out friend-hand. Must not let situation drift to intolerability. We got too much else to do besides suffer."
- Allen Ginsberg in letter to Jack Kerouac from Carolyn Cassady's Heart Beat: My Life with Jack & Neal

This morning I finished Steinbeck's The Winter of Our Discontent and I don't get where the blurbs and the critics call it an angry novel. Truth be told, I was shocked and impressed at the level of humor he gave his protagonist. Kudos Steinbeck! Laughter is key!

Right now Tucson has a big blanket of grey stretched from horizon to horizon. There are brilliant blue holes poking through. Beneath that blanket smaller clouds are dark grey wannabe ominous. Sometimes the sun or the daytime full moon pierces through creating amazing explosions.

"In hell I'll mourn the power of your forgetting---"
- Brent Hendricks, from Ace of Hearts

Whitman's Lincoln

081214.3:50pm

Today I finally bought my own copy of Whitman's Leaves of Grass and it included the text of Specimen Days. That's the book that I bought for Nicole for her birthday (our birthday). Here is the excerpt that inspired my poem Walt Whitman For My Birthday:

"The Inauguration - March 4 - The President very quietly rode down to the Capitol in his own carriage, by himself, on a sharp trot, about noon, either because he wish'd to be on hand to sign bills, &c., or to get rid of marching in line with the absurd procession, the muslin Temple of Liberty, and pasteboard Monitor. I saw him on his return, at three o'clock, after the performance was over. He was in his plain two-horse barouche, and look'd very much worn and tired; the lines, indeed, of vast responsibilities, intricate questions, and demands of life and death, cut deeper than ever upon his dark brown face; yet all the old goodness, tenderness, sadness and canny shrewdness, underneath the furrows. (I never see that man without feeling that he is one to become personally attach'd to, for his combination of purest, heartiest tenderness, and native Western even rudest forms of manliness.)"

- Walt Whitman, Specimen Days

"He hated it when you called him a moron. All morons hate it when you call them a moron."

- J.D. Salinger - The Catcher in the Rye

The Lost Jazz of All Saturdays

081213.12:10pm

Major score today. $5.80 at a thrift store:

Herman Hesse - Magister Ludi, Peter Camenzind, Demian
Aldous Huxley - The Genius and the Goddess
Joseph Heller - Catch-22
Samuel R. Delaney - Nova
Bromberg & Liebb - Hot Words for SAT I - 350 words you need to know

and the cake:

Allen Ginsberg - Planet News - 1960-1967 - Pocket Poets #23
Allen Ginsberg - Reality Sandwiches - Pocket Poets #18
Allen Ginsberg - Howl and Other Poems - Pocket Poets #4

Yes, please.

"....sweet trees in the nights of another spring....
....hearkening the lost jazxz of all Saturdays....
....an ageless monument to love in the imagination....
....consumed by the invisible poem...."

- Allen Ginsberg, from The Green Automobile, Reality Sandwiches

Oh yeah.... and here's the whole thing:

The Green Automobile

If I had a Green Automobile
I'd go find my old companion
in his house on the Western ocean.
Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

I'd honk my horn at his manly gate,
inside his wife and three
children sprawl naked
on the living room floor.

He'd come running out
to my car full of heroic beer
and jump screaming at the wheel
for he is the greater driver.

We'd pilgrimage to the highest mount
of our earlier Rocky Mountain visions
laughing in each others arms,
delight surpassing the highest Rockies,

and after old agony, drunk with new years,
bounding toward the snowy horizon
blasting the dashboard with original bop
hot rod on the mountain

we'd batter up the cloudy highway
where angels of anxiety
careen through the trees
and scream out of the engine.

We'd burn all night on the jackpine peak
seen from Denver in the summer dark,
forestlike unnatural radiance
illuminating the mountaintop:

childhood youthtime age & eternity
would open like sweet trees
in the nights of another spring
and dumbfound us with love,

for we can see together
the beauty of the souls
hidden like diamonds
in the clock of the world,

like Chinese magicians can
confound the immortals
with our intellectuality
hidden in the mist,

in the Green Automobile
which I have invented
imagined and visioned
on the roads of the world

more real than the engine
on a track in the desert
purer than Greyhound and
swifter than physical jetplane.

Denver! Denver! we'll return
roaring across the City & County Building lawn
which catches the pure emerald flame
streaming in the wake of our auto.

This time we'll buy up the city!
I cashed a great check in my skull bank
to found a miraculous college of the body
up on the bus terminal roof.

But first we'll drive the stations of downtown,
poolhall flophouse jazzjoint jail
whorehouse down Folsom
to the darkest alleys of Larimer

paying respects to Denver's father
lost on the railroad tracks,
stupor of wine and silence
hallowing the slum of his decades,

salute him and his saintly suitcase
of dark muscatel, drink
and smash the sweet bottles
on Diesels in allegiance.

Then we go driving drunk on boulevards
where armies march and still parade
staggering under the invisible
banner of Reality --

hurtling through the street
in the auto of our fate
we share an archangelic cigarette
and tell each other's fortunes:

fames of supernatural illumination,
bleak rainy gaps of time,
great art learned in desolation
and we beat apart after six decades....

and on an asphalt crossroad,
deal with each other in princely
gentleness once more, recalling
famous dead talks of other cities.

The windshield's full of tears,
rain wets our naked breasts,
we kneel together in the shade
amid the traffic of night in paradise

and now renew the solitary vow
we made each other take
in Texas, once:
I can't inscribe here ....
......
.....

How many Saturday nights will be
made drunken by this legend?
How will young Denver come to mourn
her forgotten sexual angel?

How many boys will strike the black piano
in imitation of the excess of a native saint?
Or girls fall wanton under his spectre in the high
schools of melancholy night?

While all the time in Eternity
in the wan light of this poem's radio
we'll sit behind forgotten shades
hearkening the lost jazz of all Saturdays.

Neal, we'll be real heroes now
in a war between our cocks and time:
let's be the angels of the world's desire
and take the world to bed with us before
we die.

Sleeping alone, or with companion,
girl or fairy sheep or dream,
I'll fail of lacklove, you, satiety:
all men fall, our fathers fell before,

but resurrecting that lost flesh
is but a moment's work of mind:
an ageless monument to love
in the imagination:

memorial built out of our own bodies
consumed by the invisible poem --
We'll shudder in Denver and endure
though blood and wrinkles blind our eyes.

So this Green Automobile:
I give you in flight
a present, a present
from my imagination.

We will go riding
over the Rockies,
we'll go on riding
all night long until dawn,

then back to your railroad, the SP
your house and your children
and broken leg destiny
you'll ride down the plains

in the morning: and back
to my visions, my office
and eastern apartment
I'll return to New York.

NY 1953

- Allen Ginsberg, The Green Automobile, Reality Sandwiches

On Burroughs' Work

The method must be purest meat
and no symbolic dressing,
actual visions & actual prisons
as seen then and now.

Prisons and visions presented
with rare descriptions
corresponding exactly to those
of Alcatraz and Rose.

A naked lunch is natural to us,
we eat reality sandwiches.
But allegories are so much lettuce.
Don't hide the madness.

- Allen Ginsberg, On Burroughs' Work, Reality Sandwiches

The Whole Secret

"I just did what I did because I did it - that's the whole secret."

- Walt Whitman, from Horace Traubel's With Walt Whitman in Camden, Vol. 3

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

- Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken, from "Mountain Interval"

"I am," I said
To no one there
An no one heard at all
Not even the chair
"I am," I cried
"I am," said I
And I am lost, and I can't even say why
Leavin' me lonely still

Did you ever read about a frog who dreamed of bein' a king
And then became one
Well except for the names and a few other changes
I you talk about me, the story's the same one

But I got an emptiness deep inside
And I've tried, but it won't let me go
And I'm not a man who likes to swear
But I never cared for the sound of being alone

- Neil Diamond, from "I Am, I Said."

Trippers and askers surround me,
People I meet, the effect upon me of my early life or the ward and city I live in, or the nation,
The latest dates, discoveries, inventions, societies, authors old and new,
My dinner, dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues,
The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love,
The sickness of one of my folks or of myself, or ill-doing or loss or lack of money, or depressions or exaltations,
Battles, the horrors of fratricidal war, the fever of doubtful news, the fitful events;
These come to me days and nights and go from me again,
But they are not the Me myself.

- Walt Whitman, from Song of Myself, 1855

More Things in Heaven and Earth

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

- Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1. Scene V

GO and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.

If thou be'st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till age snow white hairs on thee,
Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me,
All strange wonders that befell thee,
And swear,
No where
Lives a woman true and fair.

If thou find'st one, let me know,
Such a pilgrimage were sweet;
Yet do not, I would not go,
Though at next door we might meet,
Though she were true, when you met her,
And last, till you write your letter,
Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come, to two, or three.

- John Donne, Song

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
O luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

- Robert Frost, Acquainted With The Night, from "New Hampshire", 1923

What It Is

It is what it is.

I haven't been putting up any new posts for a while and will not for a while more. I have been and will be preoccupied for some time with being sober and working and finishing the final draft of my novel, Fanatic Gardens, I am also in mourning over the loss of what I believe is the only true love I've had so far in this fanatic life. Silly pathetic me.

As usual, however, I am doing much reading and studying and I will sometimes post excerpts and quotes and tasty tidbits from my mental journeys.

Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are!
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.

When the blazing sun is gone,
When he nothing shines upon,
Then you show your little light,
Twinkle, twinkle, all the night.

Then the trav'ller in the dark,
Thanks you for your tiny spark,
He could not see which way to go,
If you did not twinkle so.

In the dark blue sky you keep,
And often thro' my curtains peep,
For you never shut your eye,
Till the sun is in the sky.

'Tis your bright and tiny spark,
Lights the trav'ller in the dark:
Tho' I know not what you are,
Twinkle, twinkle, little star.

- Jane Taylor, The Star, 1806

Somewhere over the rainbow
Way up high,
There's a land that I heard of
Once in a lullaby.
Somewhere over the rainbow
Skies are blue,
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true.

Someday I'll wish upon a star
And wake up where the clouds are far
Behind me.
Where troubles melt like lemon drops
Away above the chimney tops
That's where you'll find me.

Somewhere over the rainbow
Bluebirds fly.
Birds fly over the rainbow.
Why then, oh why can't I?

If happy little bluebirds fly
Beyond the rainbow
Why, oh why can't I?

- H. Arlen & E.Y. Harburg, Over The Rainbow, 1939

Steady Breathing

"Cezanne advised brave isolation to create 'an optic' --- but by God the holier vision is advanced by lovers, & by far the happiest route."

- Nicole B.

All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair--
The bees are stirring--birds are on the wing--
And Winter, slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!
And I, the while, the sole unbusy thing,
Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.

Yet well I ken the banks where amaranths blow,
Have traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow.
Bloom, O ye amaranths! bloom for whom ye may,
For me ye bloom not! Glide, rich streams, away!
With lips unbrighten'd, wreathless brow, I stroll:
And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul?
Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And Hope without an object cannot live.

- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Work Without Hope

Today and Forever

We are unutterably alone, essentially, especially in the things most intimate and most important to us.

- Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, 5 April 1903

*************************************

Ruth, a Moabite, had come while Boaz slept,
and now lay at his feet, who knows what light
from what door in the heavens finding her breast
naked, tender to its stirring as his dreams.
But Boaz did not know Ruth came to him,
and Ruth did not know what God asked of her.
The night breathed out a freshness from wild
clumps of asphodels over the hills of Judah.
The dark was nuptial, and august, and solemn.
Hidden angels must have hovered over them,
for Ruth saw in the night sky, here and there,
a dark blue movement like a wing.
The breath of Boaz sleeping mixed
with a dull hush of brookwater in the moss.
It was the time of year when lilies open
and let go their sweetness on the hills.
Ruth was dreaming. Boaz slept. The grass looked black.
And little bells of sheep were trembling on the verge
of silence. Goodness came down clear as starlight
into the great calm where the lions go to drink.
All slept, all, from Ur to Bethlehem.
The stars enameled the deep black of the sky.
A narrow crescent in the low dark
of the west shone, while Ruth wondered,
lying still now, eyes half opened,
under twinging of their lids, what god
of the eternal summer passing dropped
his golden scythe there in that field of stars.

- Victor Hugo, Boaz Asleep, Translated by Brooks Haxton

*************************************

Every time we say goodbye, I die a little
Every time we say goodbye, I wonder why a little
Why the gods above me, who must be in the know
Think so little of me, they allow you to go?

When you're near there's such an air of spring about it
I can hear a lark somewhere begin to sing about it
There's no love song finer but how strange the change
From major to minor every time we say goodbye

When you're near there's such an air of spring about it
I can hear a lark somewhere begin to sing about it
There's no love song finer but how strange the change
From major to minor every time we say goodbye
We say goodbye

- Chet Baker, Every Time We Say Goodbye, The Very Best of Julie London